Who was Thomas Paine?
Thomas Paine’s COMMON SENSE exploded on the American scene like a bombshell. Within just three months of publication, it sold more than 120,000 copies. Paine, a radical English printer who lived in America only since 1774, called stridently and stirringly for independence. More than that, Paine challenged many common American assumptions about government as well as, the colonies’ relationship to England. Rejecting the notion that a balance of monarchy, aristocrocy, and democracy was necessary to preseve freedom, Paine advocated the establishment of a republic, a government by the people, with no king or nobility. Instead of ascknowledging the benifits of a connection with the mother country, Thomas Paine insisted that Britain had exploited the colonies unmercifully. In place of the frequently heard assertion that an independent America would be weak and divided, Paine substituted an unlimited confidence in America’s strength when freed from English rule. Paine’s striking, brutal statem
To: liberty-l…@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 12:53 AM Who was Thomas Paine? By Brendan O’Neill *It’s 200 years since the British-born “father of the American revolution” died. His words also helped shape modern Britain and France and yet few people know much about him at all. * “Possibly the most influential writer in modern human history” – that’s the billing Thomas Paine got from one of his biographers. Paine was an international bestseller long before the days of Dan Brown or Jackie Collins and is the only Brit to have been quoted in Barack Obama’s inauguration speech earlier this year. There are statues of him in Paris and New Jersey and a monument to him in New York – though we still haven’t reached a situation where, as French leader Napoleon Bonaparte said: “A statue of gold should be erected to him in every city in the universe.” Yet no high-level commemorations of his death have been planned. His writings rarely appear on the national curriculum in the UK. And
Born in Thetford, Norfolk, in 1737 (there is a statue of him there, too), Paine’s early adult life as a corset-maker and school teacher was largely unmarked by politics. But it was his subsequent job as an excise officer that inspired him to pen his first political work – a 21-page pamphlet that demanded better pay and conditions for his fellow workers. A chance meeting with Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US, in London in 1774 changed Paine’s life – and, in time, American history. Following Franklin’s advice to cross the Atlantic, Paine pitched up in America in November 1774, just as American revolutionaries were having heated debates about whether to break with Britain. Common (sense) man Paine threw his lot in with those Americans who were thirsting for independence from Britain. In January 1776 he published a short pamphlet that earned him the title The Father of the American Revolution.
Author: Brendan O’Neill Source: BBC Magazine Title: WHO WAS THOMAS PAINE? It’s 200 years since the British-born “father of the American revolution” died. His words also helped shape modern Britain and France and yet few people know much about him at all. “Possibly the most influential writer in modern human history” – that’s the billing Thomas Paine got from one of his biographers. Paine was an international bestseller long before the days of Dan Brown or Jackie Collins and is the only Brit to have been quoted in Barack Obama’s inauguration speech earlier this year. There are statues of him in Paris and New Jersey and a monument to him in New York – though we still haven’t reached a situation where, as French leader Napoleon Bonaparte said: “A statue of gold should be erected to him in every city in the universe.” Yet no high-level commemorations of his death have been planned.
