Argument Essay Thomas Paine

America is the most diverse country in the world and people come here to live the “American Dream”. Paine’s assertion is still true today that America is a diverse nation, however, the “the taxes are few” and there being “nothing to engender riots and tumults” is in fact not true today. America is known as the world’s “melting pot” for a reason. People want to come to the greatest nation on Earth. Throughout the history of America people have immigrated from a wide variety of war-torn, famine, poverty-stricken nations to come to a country that ensures an opportunity to make something of yourself. It has been a safe haven for people even before it became a country; the puritans escaped religious persecution from England in the 17th century. Then the Irish left a potato famine to come to America. This led to many more countries in the Eastern Hemisphere immigrating here to America. They came because there is no National language, no national religion, no dictatorial government. This is America where everyone is ensured equal inalienable rights, wherever a person is from. But Paine was wrong when he said “the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. There is poverty in America and the rich are very privileged. New York City would prove this exactly. There’s the rich: walking the town, head high, looking through the expensive shops and eating at lavish restaurants. And on the other side of the street there is the homeless: head down, looking through trash cans for food, walking down the side walk begging for loose change. This is not the America Thomas Paine envisions. And his statement of a riot free country has never existed. It starts with Shay’s rebellion in the 1880’s, consisting of western Massachusetts farmers rioting over taxation- another thing Paine says will be few; then with the suffrage movement for women in the early 20th century. And a very large one took place in the 1960’s for Civil Rights’ which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Even