Do you know who this is ?

Don’t feel dumb, I didn’t either a month ago. Then I stumbled across his life story, and now it would be safe to say that I worship the guy. And I happened to find his biography for one dollar in a junk collection at the Goodwill Store. He would have found that last fact funny and fitting. His whole life was a sacrifice without reward….

You wouldn’t recognize him because although he is the founding father of the American Revolution, his face is on no currency. And though he was the best selling author of the 18th century, and wrote the things that inspired the crossing of the Delaware and Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he has no monuments or holidays. He invented the name “United States of America” and Americans desecrated his headstone. He matched wits with every great political figure you’ve ever heard of – Franklin, Hamilton, Lafayette, Adams, Jefferson, Napoleon, Voltaire, Robespierre, Monroe, Washington….His biography is like Forrest Gump meets Jason Bourne with a kilo of cocaine. He was loved whereever he went…but when he died, there were only 6 people at his funeral; 5 were political refugees he was protecting, and the 6th was the coffin maker, who had come to collect his pay….But his incredible life story wouldn’t end there – he literally returns from the grave to continue his mission. And if you think that I’m shitting you, read on….

His journey begins in the worst possible place – he’s dying of thyphoid on a ship bound for Philadelphia in 1774. He’s 37 years old, he’s penniless, unknown, fired from every job he’s ever had, bankrupted his business, his second wife has divorced him, and he’s landing smack-dab in the middle of a colonial insurrection, knocking on death’s door…. But within two years, as editor of Pennsylvania Magazine, he has prognosticated and laid out the progressive movement for the next two hundred years.

He wrote about and supported anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, Indian’s rights, incremental tax code for the wealthy, social security, public education, minimum wage, union rights, and even tuition vouchers. Remember now, this guy flunked out of school at age 13. He flunked out Twice.

He fights in the war alongside Washington, then donates his pay, and his last 500 dollars, to buy food for the soldiers. After the war, he invents and designs an iron bridge, and returns to England in 1787 to find somebody who will build it. While he’s there, he writes another book attacking the King and defending the rights of man. The book, which claims kings are not divine, and England would be better off without one, sells almost as many copies as the Bible.

The King doesn’t like that.

George 3 puts a price on his head; but with the help of friends like William Blake and Thomas Hardy, our hero manages to sneak out of London while spies and assassins are hot on his trail. And he makes it to Paris in 1792, just in time for (you guessed it) the French Revolution.
Because of his world-wide fame, he gets elected to the French National Assembly, even though he doesn’t speak the language. But he votes against killing the King, turning Robespierre’s own arguments against capital punishment right back in his face.
Now take a sec to think about this…Here is a guy who put his life on the line to argue against the tyranny of kings on two continents, and now he is risking his life to protect Louis XVI….

Robespierre doesn’t like that.

So he sentences our man to death. Our hero asks his old war buddy George Washington to save him, but the ex-president refuses to help. So while in prison, awaiting the guillotine, he says what the hell, and writes The Age of Reason, a frontal attack on the church and organized religion. What he writes is a declaration against the atheism inherent in the politics of the Montagnards (Jacobins) and in defense of a spiritual Deism. But on the morning of his execution, the jailer screws up, and misses his cell. 8 days later, Robespierre and 108 of his followers are killed.

Our man has to hang out for awhile in France because King George still wants to hang him. Finally, when he’s 65, Jefferson sends Monroe to go get him, and bring him back to retire in a little cottage in upstate New York, which for our hero, is once again, the absolute worst place in the world to be…….

So who is this guy and what did he do that was so bad…? He is Thomas Paine, the walking, talking world-wide revolutionary radical. The guy defines political pyromania. He makes Che Guevera look like Al Gore. And why did the America he loved and helped to build come to hate him? He was never involved in any major scandal, was generous and humble to a fault, and never betrayed his friends or his principles…..

Now we need to pause for a little background. The mid 1750′s to the early 1800′s was called the Age of Enlightenment, sort of like a second Renaissance. For several decades scientific discoveries had been piling up and multiplying exponentially, while the mainstream churches: Anglican, Protestant, Catholic, could not adapt, and were losing converts quickly. At this time, much the same as it is now, most educated people, including almost all the founding fathers, were definitely not Christian. They did not believe in miracles or the truth of the Bible or religion. They believed in science and logic. They did believe in a God, which could be compared to the “Force” used by Luke Skywalker, or the “Great Spirit” of the native Americans. It was called “Deism.” The truth of this statement is revealed in their private letters, reprinted here….

Thomas Jefferson to Baron Von Humboldt, 1813 :

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest ridden people maintaining a free and civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance…. I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. ……G. Morris often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than he himself did…(private journal, 1800)

Benjamin Franklin, autobiography:

I began to be regarded by pious souls either as an apostate or an atheist….The infinite Father expects or requires no worship or praise from us….I soon became a thorough Deist…

James Madison (Father of the Constitution)

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. 1803

John Adams (Private letters to Thom. Jefferson)

God is an essence we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world. This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

Ethan Allen

I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian.

John Adams and George Washington. ( The Treaty of Tripoli, 1796)

The United States was in no sense founded on the Christian religion..

But religious fervor went Tammy Faye Baker bat-shit nuts after the revolution when it was discovered that the Constitution made no mention of the Christian God of the Bible. Christians felt they’d been duped. In all fairness, many public figures had sprinkled their speeches with references to “the Creator” or “the God of Nature” or “the Mighty God” which was actually in keeping with their Deist beliefs, but also easily misunderstood. And some of the founders certainly accepted religion. Needless to say, the right-wing Christian conservatives were pissed, and a fundamentalist backlash grew. Like the question of slavery, it was an issue that haunted the grand ideals of a new nation….Nothing is new under the sun…

Huge, days-long tent revivals were held where speakers pounded their Bibles and preached fire and brimstone against the non-Christians. There was lots of singing and speaking in tongues and people passing out. And despite that last fact, it was called the Second Great Awakening, and the hotbed center of this pentecostal push was, you guessed it, upstate New York.

The area right around Paine’s cottage would be the birthplace of movements that went on to become the Shakers, the 7th Day Adventists, and the Mormons. And they had all just finished reading the book Paine wrote against Christianity. ( Now, if you recall, he wrote that book on his death-bed, as a defense against the atheism that was the reign of terror. ) He had praised Jesus, but denied a virgin birth or a resurrection or any of that miracle junk. He denied the Holy Trinity and embraced Unitarianism. He said the church was a business that sold man-made fables to gullible fools. He said that his God, a real God, would not just reveal Himself to one man, and then expect everybody else to believe that guy. He said the word of God is all around you, spinning in endless beauty…It’s written in the sand and the stars and the sparkle in a child’s eyes. It is your gift, and no man has the power to interpret it for you.
He said, “My own mind is my own church.”

The church didn’t like that.

To further complicate matters, there was a strategic battle going on between the Federalists and the Democrat-Republicans. Their opposing platforms have no modern counterpart except for how much they hated each other. In this atmosphere, Paine was political poison. He had written that the Federalists were the party of large government, foreign wars, taxation, privileges for the rich and a nostalgia for nobility. President Jefferson, leader of the opposing Democratic-Republican party, adored Paine, but for prudence sake, was forced to resort to sending secret messages to him. It didn’t help that the base of Federalist power was New England. Meanwhile, the newspapers were claiming that Paine worshiped the devil, was a drunken wife-beater, and had sex with cats. (And you thought Fox news was bad…)
But even in his late sixties, Paine just didn’t know when to shut up. He writes a scathing letter to Washington (a Federalist) saying that the president had abandoned him in his hour of need while he was rotting in Luxemborg prison… He says, “ The world will long be puzzled if you just abandoned your principles, or if you ever had any to begin with..” Pretty hot words for the Father of Our Country.

The Federalists didn’t like that.

About this same time, full news of the reign of terror in revolutionary France has also arrived, and many scholars are blaming the bloody mayhem on the atheism of the Jacobins, and they blame Paine for helping cause 10 thousand deaths. But it’s hard to scare a guy who sat wracked with fever for ten months, waiting to get his head chopped off. So, Paine writes a couple more pamphlets about justice and freedom of thought. On his death bed, the minister asks him to recant, and accept Jesus Christ. And Paine responds,”Good morning,” and then in the amount of time it takes for you to read this sentence, he adds, “Good-bye.” The next day, he’s dead.

But it ain’t over yet…..

No Christian cemetery will accept his body, not even the Quakers, so he’s buried in a shallow grave on his little farm. Meanwhile, his literary nemesis, his arch-rival, the guy over in England who said Paine slept with cats, is himself thrown in prison by King George. Now these two guys just hated each other. (Think Phony versus Abomb. ) Anyway, this Cobbett guy had his own newspaper, and he just attacked Paine relentlessly. But while Cobbett’s sitting in prison, he actually takes the time to READ everything Paine wrote, and when he’s done, his heart and mind have done a complete 180. Now he worships the man.

After release from prison, Cobbett travels to America with some henchmen, digs up Paine’s body, (yes, you read that right) and returns it to England, where he travels around with it, attempting to solicit donations for a proper tomb with a monument. His fund-raising attempts ignite a fire-storm of controversy involving Paine’s positions against Gods and Kings. The question of what to do with Paine’s remains polarizes the communities into loyal monarchists, or freedom loving democrats. Cobbett dies without ever getting the monument for his old nemesis, and the box of bones changes hands many times. Rumor has it that pieces of Paine were secretly auctioned off, and his earthly remains were scattered across 4 continents.

Paine may be disembodied, forced to roam the world without a friend, and his only monument a faded paperback at a discount store, but his dangerous ideas will live forever.