Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine, or "that dirty little atheist" to Theodore Roosevelt, was the man most responsible for the folk of the United States deciding to fight for their independence. He wrote the smash hit, Common Sense, and gave all the money to the Continental Army.
After freeing the American colonies, he turned his pen against religious authority in The Age of Reason and in defense of liberty — rather an attack on Edmund Burke — in The Rights of Man (which in turn inspired Mary Wollstonecraft to pen The Rights of Woman). He was also one of the first vocal abolitionists.
While some of his quotes make him beloved by libertarians, he also wrote of the need for all people to be given a small sum by the government, and then to be provided for in their old age, which was considered "generations ahead of its time."[1] Paine proposed a form of estate tax in order to implement this.[2]
[edit] Abuse
In full irony, a particularly virulent madman has styled himself the reincarnation of Thomas Paine.[3]
[edit] Famous quotes
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
"[C]reate a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age."
"It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall be organised, or how administered."
"Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain." - John Adams
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Taking Liberties, The British Library
- ↑ "Various methods may be proposed for this purpose, but that which appears to be the best ... is at the moment that property is passing by the death of one person to the possession of another. In this case, the bequeather gives nothing: the receiver pays nothing. The only matter to him is that the monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there never was a right, begins to cease in his person."
- ↑ "Glenn Beck is Thomas Paine, Except for Everything", HuffPo