Posted by Tom Paine, a resident of another community, on Oct 28, 2008 at 7:18 am

HAS our nation lost its Enlightenment?

History texts call the period where people realized that they could use human reason to counter superstition and ignorance, "The Enlightenment". It was a time when humanity surged forward using human reason to challenge the ingrained aristocracy of the times and the control religion had over people's lives. The Enlightenment confronted the domination of the many by the few. The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual explosion coming about from the cumulative logic and knowledge acquired by all the previous philosophers and current thinkers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and many others. The United States revolution against the tyranny of England's King George was a defining moment in the birth of a nation built by those who continued the Enlightenment through the 18th century. The United States "founding fathers" rejected the dominant paradigms of their time. They were not content with the influence the Church had on society and the emerging new and independent nation.