With the Fourth of July nearly upon us, it’s time to revisit my favorite American patriot, Tom Paine. Paine is and always has been my favorite American since I first read about him in high school. He was friends with another hero of mine, the English poet William Blake.

What is it about Tom Paine that so appeals to me you might ask? Let’s start out with this simple observation, he was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. Paine moved to America to Philadelphia from England at the age of 38 with a letter of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin who described him as an “ingenious, worthy young man.” The letter was sufficient to procure him a job as a writer where he showed such skill that he quickly became the editor of a journal. His first article was a powerful article against slavery and the slave trade to which he remained opposed for the rest of his life.

It was for the sake of freedom-freedom from monarchy, aristocracy, slavery, and every species of tyranny-that Paine took up the cause of America. How relevant those freedoms are today when we are experiencing a rise in authoritarianism, oligarchy and inequality. Whether we can hang on to those freedoms is once again the question of the day.

Paine was one of the first, if not the very first, to advocate complete freedom for the United States. In October 1775, when even those who subsequently signed the Declaration of Independence were still hoping for some accommodation with the British Government, he wrote:

“I hesitate not for a moment to believe that the Almighty will finally separate America from Britain. Call it Independency or what you will, if it is the cause of God and humanity it will go on. And when the Almighty shall have blest us, and made us a people dependent only upon him, then may our first gratitude be shown by an act of continental legislation, which shall put a stop to the importation of Negroes for sale, soften the hard fate of those already here, and in time procure their freedom.”

During the most difficult years of the War of Independence he spent his days campaigning and his evenings composing rousing manifestoes published under the signature “Common Sense.” These had enormous success and helped materially in winning the war.

No other writer was so widely read in America, and he could have made large sums by his pen, but he always refused to accept any money at all for what he wrote.

In the hope of rousing a responsive movement in England, he wrote his The Rights of Man on which his fame as a democrat chiefly rests.

Governments, he says, “may all be comprehended under three heads. First, superstition. Secondly, power. Thirdly, the common interest of society and the common rights of man. The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, the third of reason.”

Paine was a republican (a believer in a republic) and strongly objected to hereditary rule which horrified the conservatives of the day. He also believed that it is impossible to bind posterity, and that constitutions must be capable of revision from time to time.

Paine’s third important contribution to posterity was The Age Of Reason which gave literary expression to his theological opinions, opinions that Jefferson, Washington and Adams shared but dared not state publicly. It was these opinions that got Paine into trouble with the clerics who were still all powerful in his time. The basics of his opinions sound quite reasonable to the modern mind although theocracy is staging an unfortunate comeback in the current American political climate in alliance with authoritarianism and oligarchy.

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. 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.”

The Government of England in Paine’s time was a ruthless oligarchy, using Parliament as a means of lowering the standard of life in the poorest classes; Paine advocated political reform as the only cure for this abomination and had to flee for his life. In France, for opposing unnecessary bloodshed, he was thrown into prison and narrowly escaped death. In America, for opposing slavery and upholding the principles of the Declaration of Independence, he was abandoned by the Government at the moment when he most needed its support. If, as he maintained and as many now believe, true religion consists in “doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy,” there was not one among his opponents who had as good a claim to be considered a religious man.

He was vilified for The Age Of Reason which I re-read every year to celebrate the Fourth of July. Neither Washington nor Jefferson nor any of America’s most popular patriots came to his rescue. He was maligned by those who disagreed with his religious views and they did all in their power to destroy his reputation by calling him a drunk, a womanizer, a pauper and even denying him the right to vote on the grounds that he, the author of Common Sense, was not a true American. Even his bones were lost which would have pleased him as he despised relics and cults and would likely have said that his writings were his best memorial if asked.

Christopher Hitchens in his short book on Paine writes:

As the nineteenth century progressed, Paine’s inspiration resurfaced, and his influence was felt in the movement for reform of Parliament in England, and in the agitation against slavery in America. John Brown, ostensibly a Calvinist, had Paine’s books in his camp. Abraham Lincoln was a close reader of his work, and used to deploy arguments from The Age of Reason in his disputes with religious sectarians, as well as more general Paineite themes in his campaign to turn a bloody Civil War into what he called ‘a second American Revolution.’ The later rise of the Labour movement, and the agitation for women’s suffrage, all saw Paine’s example being revived and quoted. When Franklin Roosevelt made his great speech to rally the American people against fascism after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he quoted an entire paragraph from Paine’s Crisis, beginning: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls…’

In a time when both rights and reason are under several kinds of open and covert attack, the life and writing of Thomas Paine will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.

Rest in peace, my old friend. My firmest wish would be to be half the man that you were.  And, as the good man who set you on your way, Benjamin Franklin, famously said in response to Elizabeth Willing Powell’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” — “A republic, if you can keep it,” I hereby affirm that I wish to keep this republic and will do what I can to do so.