Chris Hedges: Thomas Paine, Our Contemporary

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Thomas Paine, Our Contemporary

Posted on May 25, 2014
By Chris Hedges


Cornel West, Richard D. Wolff and I, along with moderator Laura Flanders, next Sunday will inaugurate “The Anatomy of Revolution,” a series of panel discussions focusing on modern revolutionary theorists. This first event will be part of a two-day conference in New York City sponsored by the Left Forum, and nine other discussions by West, Wolff and me will follow in other venues later this year.

Sunday’s event will be about Thomas Paine, the author of “Common Sense,” “The Rights of Man” and “The Age of Reason”—the most widely read political essays of the 18th century, works that established the standards by which rebellion is morally and legally permissible. We will ask whether the conditions for revolt set by Paine have been met with the rise of the corporate state. Should Paine’s call for the overthrow of British tyranny inspire our own call for revolution? And if it should, to echo Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?

Thomas Paine is America’s one great revolutionary theorist. We have produced a slew of admirable anarchists—Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day and Noam Chomsky—and radical leaders have arisen out of oppressed groups—Sitting Bull, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Cornel West and bell hooks—but we don’t have a tradition of revolutionists. This makes Paine unique.

Paine’s brilliance as a writer—his essay “Common Sense” is one of the finest pieces of rhetorical writing in the English language—is matched by his clear and unsentimental understanding of British imperial power. No revolutionist can challenge power if he or she does not grasp how power works. This makes Sheldon Wolin’s book “Democracy Incorporated” and his concept of “inverted totalitarianism” as important to us today as Paine’s writings on the nature of the British monarchy were in 1776. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thomas_paine_our_contemporary_20140525

[merrily]

1. Yes, Paine was a great writer, but let's be clear.

Franklin found Paine on one of his (Franklin's) trips to Europe and he (Franklin) brought Paine to the US to propagandize with a view toward gathering support for the Revolution. So, it's no coincidence that the standards set out by Paine "just happened" to justifiy the American Revolution.

He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination"

.......

On June 4, 1774, he formally separated from wife Elizabeth and moved to London, where, in September, mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Commissioner of the Excise George Lewis Scott introduced him to Benjamin Franklin,[14] who suggested emigration to British colonial America, and gave him a letter of recommendation. In October, Thomas Paine emigrated from Great Britain to the American colonies, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.

......



Paine was not, on the whole, expressing original ideas in Common Sense, but rather employing rhetoric as a means to arouse resentment of the Crown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine




His wiki goes on to say that he attacked George Washington (verbally) after the revolution.

and

Paine was elected to the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS in 1777, as secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. He resigned under pressure in 1779 after publishing confidential information about treaty negotiations with France.

Read more: Thomas Paine - England, American, Revolution, and France - JRank Articles http://law.jrank.org/pages/8998/Paine-Thomas.html#ixzz3349OdSqH

IOW, Paine seems to have "pulled a Snowden," though the US did not prosecute Paine.


As an aside, I don't know what kind of "formal separation" existed in England in 1776, a country still so opposed to divorce in the 20th Century that Edward had to abdicate rather than have a king married to a divorcee, Queen Elilzabeth forced her sister, Princess Margaret to give up what may have been the love of Margaret's life and Prince Charles couldn't have Camilla (well, not openly) until he himself divorced.

Offhand, I rather suspect that Paine simply abandoned his wife and some kind (?) wiki editor (maybe a descendant or fan of Paine?) put a gloss on it.

Does any of that detract from the fact that Paine was a brilliant essayist and lover of freedom? No, of course not. Duh. I just think we have to stop idolizing people and making heroes out of them. Or, for that matter, making unredeemable evil demons of people.

Paine, like most humans, was a very mixed bag.