Thomas Paine is next to God in my book. He was perhaps the one Founding Father who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk. It's not just that he convinced most Americans of the necessity of declaring independence from Britain with Common Sense. It's not just that he rallied the troops with his American Crisis papers.
More importantly, he cared for HUMANITY. Unlike most of the Founding Fathers, he wasn't a double-talking and dealing wanna-be aristocrat who owned slaves and wanted to keep the rest of the people "in their place." If anything (as Seraph points out here), Paine was one of the few men sensitive to the injustices faced by women. More than any other Anglo-American of his century, he had compassion for Indians (as they were then called) and wanted to abolish slavery--unlike the vast majority of hypocrites who championed liberty for white Americans but had no problems with this practice. Not least, Paine championed the rights of the common man, believing that all had the right to vote regardless of social class: his best-selling Rights of Man helped rev up the movement for universal male suffrage in Britain and America alike.
Paine was a man who didn't easily tolerate perks and privileges enjoyed by the monarchy, aristocracy and church. Long before the days of overpaid CEOs, he wrote common justice will determine, whether there ought to be an income of twenty of thirty pounds a year to one man, and of ten thousand to another. Nor did he tolerate capital punishment: which is precisely why he voted against the execution of Louis XVI and nearly got himself executed because of it. But sadly, because of his egalitarianism, those belonging to the ruling classes in America and Britain felt threatened. Maybe they didnt brand Paine a pinko commie liberalbut they branded him a Jacobin and leveler which was just as bad. After all, if everyone believed they had just as much rights as the next person, and cared not how affluent some may be provided that none be miserable in consequence of it, how would Joe Schmoe be expected to wait upon his social betters with fawning servility? Thats why when Paine published his deist Age of Reason, they jumped on him and cried "ATHEIST!" This would distract the people from properly assessing his dangerous democratic ideas. Since his death in 1809, Paine has been more or less relegated to the dustbins of American history. We know that he wrote Common Sense and American Crisis but thats about it. Its time to resurrect Paine and remember that we have it in our power to begin the world over again.
