Don Wildman

In between is Parliament, which is a really interesting conversation someday to have, as there were a lot of people in England who had problems with this situation, too.

Yes, exactly.

Which is an incredible thing to consider when you think of these times and how reliant they would be.

And it just wouldn't even cross your mind that that would be going on until this time.

Yeah.

There's so much more that's going on philosophically and politically in the thinking dating way back in Europe.

Specifically, I'm talking about the ideas of John Locke, the father of liberalism in England.

He publishes in the late part of the 1600s, dies in 1680.

Voltaire, Rousseau, all these guys are advocating for a new kind of thinking about government based on these natural rights of the individual.

This is a new age, which eventually will lead to an even bigger revolutionary period in Europe, as you mentioned.

But now it's taking hold in these colonies at the same time as all this social unrest that's just pissed off people.

It's Thomas Paine who really brings this to the

His New Nation, with a pamphlet called Common Sense, published in 1775, it eloquently advocated for independence from Britain specifically to a wider audience of American colonists.

And this definitely shifts the opinion in a pivotal way, doesn't it?

Yeah.

These days, we think of this, you know, when we hear of kings and queens as just sort of figureheads of whatever monarchy they're part of, or at least structure.

This all has real precedent.

And it's really Thomas Paine who articulates it anyway.

All these other guys are talking about it.

But I mean, for Americans, it's that time.