In Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man” he argues against generational political obligations by claiming that people alive today should not be bound by the political decisions made by their ancestors. For Paine tradition and heredity are not important. He argued that the dead had no power over the living, and that if the living believed that traditions of the past no longer worked for them they have every right to alter what their ancestors had created in order to better accommodate the circumstances of the living. Throughout “Rights of Man” Paine asserts his belief that politics ought to be left up to the living, and that the dead should play no role in politics as they no longer exist and cannot provide consent. On page 439 of Paine’s “Rights
