remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians what the founders were really about:Thomas Paine argued that no-one could produce riches without the support of society, so anyone who accumulates property owes a part of it back to society
Nickname unavailable
soc.retirement, alt.california
lets remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians what the
founders were really about:Thomas Paine argued that no-one could
produce riches without the support of society, so anyone who
accumulates property owes a part of it back to society for social
programs
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_dec2000.htm
Philosopher of the Month
December 2000 - Thomas Paine
Robin Harwood
The great and glorious Thomas Paine was a political theorist who tried
to put his theories into action. His aim was to free human beings from
oppressive government, oppressive religions, and oppressive poverty.
His method was to appeal to reason, so that all people could recognise
truth and justice. His achievements were spectacular. Paine invented
America, took part in the French Revolution, and inspired
revolutionary movements in Britain. The American Revolution was a
success, the French revolution was a disaster, and the British
Revolution never happened. Even so, Paine's ideas of democracy and
social welfare have been at least partly realized not only in these
countries, but in many other countries as well.
He was born in England, but his life there was difficult, and on
Benjamin Franklin's advice, he emigrated to the New World. Paine
arrived in Philadelphia in 1774, and took a job as editor for the
Pennsylvania Magazine. One of his first essays was a call for the
abolition of slavery. Inspired by the first moves of the American
Revolution, he wrote the pamphlet Common Sense (1776), in which he
argued that independence was both morally justified and the only
practical option for the American Colonies. The book was massively
influential, and converted many waverers, including Thomas Jefferson
and George Washington, to the idea of the United States of America
(Paine coined the name) as an independent nation.
After the War of Independence was over, he went to France, and then to
England, where he wrote The Rights of Man. Paine's message was clear
and powerful.
All individual human beings, he argued, are created with equal rights.
However, human beings do not live as isolated individuals, but as
members of society. In society we flourish fully, both because we can
enjoy the company of other people, and from being able to gain help
and support from each other. Nonetheless, human beings are not perfect
and so sometimes infringe each other's rights. As individuals we may
not have the power to exercise some of our rights, such as the right
to protect ourselves. Thus, we create the state to protect those
rights, and the individual's natural right is transformed into a civil
right of protection. Also, as members of the state, we gain additional
rights, such as the right to vote, and the right to run for office.
The only legitimate form of state is a democratic republic. Hereditary
monarchy is morally illegitimate, since it denies the current
generation the right to choose their own leaders.
Of course, Paine held that we also have duties. We have a duty to
protect the rights of our fellow citizens, and to maintain society,
but we also have to improve, enrich, and benefit society. This
includes the duty to eliminate poverty as much as we can. Paine
proposed a system of welfare to do just this. This welfare was not
charity, but a civil right.
The popularity of the book frightened the British Government. Paine
was outlawed for treason, and he fled to France. The British
revolutionary movements were squashed.
The French elected Paine to a seat in the National Convention. During
the Terror he was imprisoned and came close to being executed. After
his release, he took little active part in French politics, and
concentrated mostly on writing, particularly on religion and
economics. He produced The Age of Reason, arguing for Deism, and
against atheism and Christianity. He demonstrated that Christian
theology was unreasonable, and the doctrine of redemption was immoral.
He also showed that the Bible cannot be divine revelation, and
condemned it for its portrayal of God as cruel and vindictive.
In Agrarian Justice, he returned to the question of rights and social
justice. Civilization, he argued, should not throw people into a worse
condition than they would be in if they were uncivilized, and yet in
Europe many people were poorer than American Indians. The Earth had
been given by God as common property to all men, but the system of
land ownership meant that only some could use it. Paine argued that
they should compensate the others by paying a ground rent to society.
Also, he argued that no-one could produce riches without the support
of society, so anyone who accumulates property owes a part of it back
to society. This would provide funds for a social program that
included education, pensions, unemployment benefits, and maternity
benefits.
When Paine finally returned to America in 1802, his writings on
religion had made him an unpopular figure. Nonetheless, Paine did yet
another great service to his ungrateful country, in proposing that the
U.S.A. buy the Louisiana territory from Napoleon. Jefferson took
Paine's advice, and thus more than doubled the size of the United
States.
Paine carried on writing to the end, but his old age was miserable,
and he died in obscurity. Officialdom has preferred to ignore him,
even when carrying out his proposals, and his name is seldom on the
lists of great men, and yet many of his ideas are common currency now.
However, much of the world is still not completely free from political
oppression, organized religion, and poverty. We can still learn from
him.
Suggested reading
Thomas Paine, A. J. Ayer, (Secker and Warburg)
The
Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick (Penguin)
Tom
Paine: a political life, John Keane, (Little, Brown and Company)
Wilson Woods
> misc.consumers.frugal-living, alt.politics.economics, alt.politics,
> soc.retirement, alt.california
>
> lets remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians what the
> founders were really about:Thomas Paine
Minor sideline player.
freeisbest
> lets remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians
> that the founders were really about:Thomas Paine argued
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We can still learn from him because Payne was the first real
populist. But the banks and corporations that Jefferson warned us
against grabbed the flag and began to pay their spokesmen to explain
how wealth is holy and taxes are sinful... and they are still at it.
Nickname unavailable
you poor pathetic little person, you are truly, truly, a stupid
person. its fun to take your type apart, but at the same time its sad.
the founders would be really depressed, to see someone like you, after
they risked their lives to create this great nation, to see someone
this stupid, greedy and selfish.
he helped double the size of america, and he got washington and
jefferson involved in the revolution.
the declaration and constitution has his hand prints all over them.
his writings emboldened americas to revolt.
http://www.thomaspaine.org/bio/edison.html
The Philosophy of Paine
by Thomas A. Edison
June 7, 1925
Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the
United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I
might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable
lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first
wrote those impressive words, 'the United States of America.' But it
is hardly strange. Paine's teachings have been debarred from schools
everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is
hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.
We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal
of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington
performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were
matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. Washington himself
appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great
patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson,
and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases
of liberty.
I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not
advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and
Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his
principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine's
writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary
thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am
certain of it. Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied.
Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore
time must balance the scales. The Declaration and the Constitution
expressed in form Paine's theory of political rights. He worked in
Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and
occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation's leaders when
they framed the Constitution.
Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in
the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the
document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in
even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had
communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and
closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great
documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine.
We may look in other directions, where the trace is plainer, easier
definitely to establish, for evidences of his influence. Paine, you
know, came over to the Colonies after meeting Franklin in London. He
had encountered numerous misfortunes, and Franklin gave him letters to
friends back home which resulted in his becoming editor of the
Pennsylvania Magazine in January of 1775. It is highly interesting
that circumstance should have brought him to America at that time and
placed him in such a position. Paine had little education, in the
school sense of the term, but he had read avidly and written a great
deal before meeting Franklin. Once placed at the editor's desk of a
new American periodical, he found time and opportunity exactly suited
to his spirit and his genius.
The Pennsylvania Magazine began to bristle -- so much so that its
owner, and the cooler heads of Philadelphia, were worried by Paine's
writings. Looking back to those times we cannot, without much reading,
clearly gauge the sentiment of the Colonies. Perhaps the larger number
of responsible men still hoped for peace with England. They did not
even venture to express the matter that way. Few men, indeed, had
thought in terms of war.
Then Paine wrote 'Common Sense,' an anonymous tract which immediately
stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout
the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at
Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer
with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no
suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which never has
been answered adversely, and never can be, so long as man esteems his
priceless possession.
In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that
the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the
difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the
same again. It must be remembered that 'Common Sense' preceded the
declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the
national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more
vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the
hour. It is probable that we should have had the Revolution without
Tom Paine. Certainly it could not be forestalled, once he had spoken.
I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom
Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers
about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of
enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed,
to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so
different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not
understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an
impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.
I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and
Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each.
I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any
man. Perhaps he gained strength from the fact that the springs of his
wisdom lay within himself, and he spoke so clearly because the man's
spirit yearned to reach other spirits.
Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled
by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with
a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a
schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that
is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He
literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then
filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed
nowhere else in American letters -- seldom in any school of writing.
Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of
letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all
things his object. Yet he has left us such stirring lines as those of
'The Crisis,' where he says: 'These are the times that try men's
souls.... Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered!' Even an
unappreciative posterity knows that line, but we, perhaps, remember
him best for his declaration: 'The world is my country; to do good my
religion.'
Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in "The Rights of Man,"
and that genius busy at his favorite task -- liberty. Written
hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, "The Rights of Man" yet
compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to
vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's
effort in his "Reflections."
Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It
was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what
Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so
cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of
enemies found it hard to answer him. "Tom Paine is quite right," said
Pitt, the Prime Minister, "but if I were to encourage his views we
should have a bloody revolution."
Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best.
"The Rights of Man" amplified and reasserted what already had been
said in "Common Sense," with now a greater force and the power of a
maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an
indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was
elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.
So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his
constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the
assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's
enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread
instrument.
But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first
part of "The Age of Reason" and now turned his time to the latter
part. Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance,
and in the course of events "The Age of Reason" appeared. Instantly it
became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to
the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New
Rochelle -- a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle
for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the
unthinking.
Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he
wrote as from the misinterpretations of others. He has been called an
atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme
intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express
by the name of deity.
His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green
hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by
established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds -- or on persons
devoted to them -- have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow
across the closing years of his life.
When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a dirty little atheist he
surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an
inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this
eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be
appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If
Paine had ceased his writings with "The Rights of Man" he would have
been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of
the Revolution. But "The Age of Reason" cost him glory at the hands of
his countrymen -- a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine.
I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and
designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the
modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius.
He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his
first thought, was liberty.
Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses.
They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But
I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow
on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued
down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how
strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom
in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad.
The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to
lay the foundations of our liberty -- who stepped forth as the
champion of so difficult a cause -- can be permanently obscured by
such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend
his fame to their hands.
This essay may be found in the book "The Diary and Sundry
Observations" edited by Dagobert D. Runes (1948).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Nickname unavailable
very well said!!!!
Wilson Woods
> On Oct 11, 7:36 am, freeisbest <demeter547op...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 10, 8:40 pm, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
>>
>> > lets remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians> that the founders were really about:Thomas Paine argued
>>> that no-one could produce riches without the support of society,
>>> so anyone who accumulates property owes a part of it back
>>> to society for social programs
>> >http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_dec2000.htm
>>
>>> Philosopher of the Month
>> > December 2000 - Thomas Paine> Robin Harwood
Paine was a minor player in the American Revolution. He was useful for
garnering support for independence, but he played no role whatever in
the formulation of the American republic.
Nickname unavailable
liar.
Wilson Woods
> On Oct 11, 11:31 am, Wilson Woods <banm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
No, not at all.
phil scott
>
> - Show quoted text -
woods is a troll, of the trasher/ basher/ idiot class... many
pseudonyms
m...@privacy.net
>
>woods is a troll, of the trasher/ basher/ idiot class... many
>pseudonyms
Sounds like a Nazi worshipper as well
Vic Smith
<ph...@philscott.net> wrote:
>On Oct 11, 10:05?am, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
>> On Oct 11, 11:31?am, Wilson Woods <banm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Nickname unavailable wrote:
>> > > On Oct 11, 7:36 am, freeisbest <demeter547op...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > >> On Oct 10, 8:40 pm, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
>>
>> > >> ?> lets remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians> that the founders were really about:Thomas Paine argued
>> > >>> that no-one could produce riches without the support of society,
>> > >>> so anyone who accumulates property owes a part of it back
>> > >>> to society for social programs
>> > >> ?>http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_dec2000.htm
>>
>> > >>> Philosopher of the Month
>> > >> ?> December 2000 - Thomas Paine> Robin Harwood
>>
>> > Paine was a minor player in the American Revolution. ?He was useful for
>> > garnering support for independence, but he played no role whatever in
>> > the formulation of the American republic.
>>
>> ?liar.- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
>woods is a troll, of the trasher/ basher/ idiot class... many
>pseudonyms
Often the case with names like "Wilson Woods."
Real name is probably Krishna Patel, Miguel Gomez or Victor Smith.
Not that it matters. Just an observation.
I would probably use Dandridge Botthamhiggins or something like it if
I chose to hide my identity when talking nonsense.
Maybe Botthamridge Higginsbottom III.
--Vic
Rod Speed
> On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:32:31 -0700 (PDT), phil scott
> <ph...@philscott.net> wrote:
>
>> On Oct 11, 10:05?am, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
>>> On Oct 11, 11:31?am, Wilson Woods <banm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Nickname unavailable wrote:
>>>>> On Oct 11, 7:36 am, freeisbest <demeter547op...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On Oct 10, 8:40 pm, Nickname unavailable <Vide...@tcq.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> lets remind the stupid selfish conservative/lonneytarians> that
>>>>>>> the founders were really about:Thomas Paine argued that no-one
>>>>>>> could produce riches without the support of society,
>>>>>>> so anyone who accumulates property owes a part of it back
>>>>>>> to society for social programs
>>>
>>>> Paine was a minor player in the American Revolution. ?He was
>>>> useful for garnering support for independence, but he played no
>>>> role whatever in the formulation of the American republic.
>>>
>>> ?liar.- Hide quoted text -
>>>
>>> - Show quoted text -
>>
>> woods is a troll, of the trasher/ basher/ idiot class... many
>> pseudonyms
>
> Often the case with names like "Wilson Woods."
> Real name is probably Krishna Patel, Miguel Gomez or Victor Smith.
> Not that it matters. Just an observation.
> I would probably use Dandridge Botthamhiggins or something like it if
> I chose to hide my identity when talking nonsense.
> Maybe Botthamridge Higginsbottom III.
I've always preferred Englebert Weaselstrangler.
Wilson Woods
I've always preferred to outwit the looters and laugh at their
frustration as they wallow in their self-induced misery.
Nickname unavailable
i agree.
Nickname unavailable
Tim Crowley
Most folks that read her posts come to the conclusion that she is
quite insane.
phil scott
>
> - Show quoted text -
it sure as hell wouldnt be the first