The Pamphlet That Has Roused Americans to Action for 250 Years

Thomas Paine published “Common Sense” in 1776 as an argument for independence. Americans across the political spectrum have ...
NPR

Trump uses 'common sense' to make a political point. It has populist appeal

This story originally published on Oct. 22, 2025. The idea of "common sense" has been central to American politics since the founding of the United States. Politicians still use the phrase all the ...
Newsweek

Common Sense May Not Be Commonly Shared, Sociologists Find

Common sense might not be so common after all, new research has found. What one person might consider common sense might be very different to someone else, a new study in the journal Proceedings of ...
The New York Times

Trump Is on the Border Between Common Sense and Nonsense

That is how Donald Trump, early in his Inaugural Address, described the principle, or at least the slogan, that would animate his second term. It’s an exquisitely Trumpian formulation — tying the ...
The Economist

Common sense is not actually very common

IN 1776 THOMAS PAINE, a traitorous Englishman living in the American colonies, published a seditious 47-page pamphlet. Called “Common Sense”, it became a best-seller. It argued that the colonies ...
The Conversation

How populist leaders like Trump use ‘common sense’ as an ideological weapon to undermine facts

Dannagal G. Young was a co-investigator on an NIH grant that provided funding for one of the studies referenced in this piece. It’s “the revolution of common sense,” President Donald Trump announced ...