Move Over, Diogenes

"What are you looking at so hard, Dad?"
"I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace, and responsibility."
"All that up there?"
"No.  I didn't find it.  It's not there any more.  Maybe it'll never be there again.  Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there."
("The Million-Year Picnic" by Ray Bradbury)

This post wasn't inspired by recent politics.  (Lord knows that politicians have been arguing for centuries.)  I just read that story at lunch and had to share it because it epitomizes my thoughts exactly.  I used to joke that I have so much common sense because I went to Thomas Paine Elementary School, and whomever didn't thusly lacked common sense.  That's not true, of course, because I'm sure some of my fellow students have never had common sense, and some people who didn't attend Paine manage to have common sense anyway.

Mind you, a web search brings up only two U.S. elementary schools by that name, other than the one I attended, so that might be indicative of the rarity of common sense in this country.  What does it say about our society that we don't have more schools named for Paine?