Paine denied spot with Founders

(From 1 June 2006)

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
By Harvey Kaye
262 pages. Hill and Wang. $25

One of the saddest episodes in American history was the burial of Thomas Paine on June 9, 1809. His French maid, her two sons, a Quaker and two black men were all who attended. No public officials. No eulogies over the grave in New Rochelle, N.Y.
That is how an ungrateful America bid farewell to one of its greatest Founding Fathers.
Even sixty-seven years later at the San Francisco centennial parade, officials refused to allow a portrait of Paine to be included with those of the Founders.
The reason for such shabby treatment was Paine’s “The Age of Reason.” The book, a blistering indictment of organized religion and biblical myth, caused most Americans to forget all his remarkable writings that helped launch the American Revolution and then sustain it during its darkest days.
Paine, an unknown Englishman, electrified America with a best-seller, “Common Sense,” in January 1776.
“Within just a few months, 150,000 copies of one or another edition were distributed in America alone,” Kaye writes. “The equivalent sales today would be fifteen million, making it, proportionately, the nation’s greatest best-seller ever.”
The pamphlet denounced monarchy, divine right and aristocracy. It ridiculed hereditary succession of kings. Paine concluded in all capital letters with a plea for “an open and determined DECLARATION FOR INDEPENDENCE.”
Fighting for freedom was not new for Paine. In March of 1775, barely two months in America, he wrote an article as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine urging the abolition of slavery.
Also forgotten by most Americans was Paine’s series of 16 Crisis papers that lifted sagging morale and rallied the ragtag forces of General Washington. The first appeared in December 1776 with the memorable first line: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” It continued:
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. But he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Returning to Britain, Paine wrote “Rights of Man,” a defense of the French Revolution, an attack on the monarchy and aristocratic privilege and a declaration that the “universal right of conscience” demanded separation of church and state.
Fleeing to France, he was elected to the National Convention as deputy from Calais while the French government declared him an honorary citizen. But he was thrown into prison by the Jacobins after voting to spare the life of deposed King Louis XVI. (Paine strongly opposed capital punishment and was grateful for French support of the American Revolution.)
Then Paine penned “The Age of Reason.” Rejecting all creeds, he wrote: “I believe in the equality of man. And I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy…My own mind is my own church.”
Contrary to centuries of smears, Paine was not an atheist. He was a deist, believing in God and rational religion. (President Teddy Roosevelt mislabeled Paine “a filthy little atheist.”)
Author Kaye notes the significant influence in America Paine has had over the centuries, particularly on the Left by people like socialist labor leader Eugene Debs. Communist writer Howard Fast, whe wrote a laudatory historical novel about Paine, was blacklisted for his pains.
Unfortunately, Paine’s words have been sometimes misapplied, most notoriously by President Reagan. Reagan fondly quoted Paine: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” But that is a revoltionary cry, the cry of Lenins, Maos and Castros. It is not the cry of a reactionary like Reagan.
Paine was the most radical of the Founders. Indeed, you could argue that Paine was the greatest of the Founders. He was the best political writer of his age. And in these terrible days of the Bush archreaction, Paine’s glow is sublime.
No monument to Paine stands on the Mall in Washington. But it should. Paine was one of the rare citizens of the world, one who believed in the brotherhood of man. He sought and fought for liberty for all people.
In his “Agrarian Justice” he was sensitive to the working class. He demanded universial manhood suffrage at a time when even revolutionary France insisted on a property qualification for voting. He urged a system of social security for the elderly and public funding of education.
Paine remains radical 203 years after his death.