Happy Birthday, Thomas Paine! Rich Conservatives Still Tremble at Your Name.
Born today Jan. 29th, 1737 278 yrs ago. . This is from 2012 for his 275th BD.
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Happy Birthday, Thomas Paine! Rich Conservatives Still Tremble at Your Name.
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In a radio interview yesterday, the host of the show, Rick Smith, asked me why Republican politicians avoid talking about Thomas Paine when Paine is so popular these days, even among Tea Partiers. I told him that the right and conservative rich – the powerful, the propertied, and the pious – have always feared Thomas Paine’s memory and legacy.
They didn’t like his pamphlet,Common Sense, which in 1776 turned America’s colonial rebellion into a revolution for independence and democracy.
They didn’t like his Crisis Papers with their words – such as “These are the times that try men’s souls” – which sustained Washington’s army in the darkest of times.
They didn’t like his Rights of Man, his great defense of the French Revolution, in which he attacked monarchy and aristocracy and laid out a vision of a social security system – the book that inspired British workers to struggle for democracy against the powers that be of the Industrial Revolution.
They didn’t like his Age of Reason, in which he not only challenged the veracity of scripture and the power of churches and clerics, but also offered a spirited argument for separation of church and state.
And they didn’t like his Agrarian Justice, in which he advanced a pioneering plan for combating the ills and evils of poverty with strong doses of social democracy.
Moreover – and most of all – they hated the fact that Paine turned Americans into radicals and that we have remained radicals at heart ever since.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and King. All read and were inspired by Paine. And today, we celebrate our radicalism. But we don’t appreciate it.
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http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/769667/happy_birthday,_thomas_paine!_rich_conservatives_still_tremble_at_your_name.
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