A Tip of the Hat to Tom Paine
Thomas Paine, one of the fathers of American freedom, died almost unmourned 200 years ago today. Brendan O’Neill remembers him at BBC.com:
In January 1776 he published a short pamphlet that earned him the title The Father of the American Revolution.
Titled simply, Common Sense, the work has been described by the Pulitzer-winning historian Gordon S Wood as “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire [American] revolutionary period”. It put the case for democracy, against the monarchy, and for American independence from British rule.
Lefties like Harvey Kaye, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, like to say
He put the case for political democracy AND social democracy, arguing in The Rights of Man that young people and the elderly should be afforded financial security by their governments. These welfare ideals are under attack right now, in our era of recession.
He has a point, though I suspect that Paine would think that the American welfare state has exceeded the sort of minimal provision for the poor that he had in mind. As for me, I rather like the fact that he proposed to execute any legislator who so much as proposed a bill to issue paper money and make it legal tender. A bit too strong, I concede. But a healthy understanding of what fiat money can do to people who work hard and save their money.
Find some of Thomas Paine’s best writings in The Libertarian Reader.
The Stimulus Bill, Rebranded
A while back I noted that the administration had helpfully developed a special symbol to brand its wonderful stimulus program. The purpose is to ensure that the people will be eternally grateful and thus will reward the president with their votes, er, no, that would be partisan and run contrary to everything the new administration stands for. The purpose is to educate people about what the government is doing on their behalf.
As one would expect, with a symbol so ridiculous have come some wonderful parodies. Several focus on what is being done to the taxpayers. There’s even a funny poster to go along with some other entries.
The strongest defense of individual liberty today is going to come from entrepreneurial activists around the country like these, who have harnessed the power of ridicule, not politicians on Capitol Hill who, after voting for bloated federal budgets for years, now claim to realize that government spending is a bad thing. The latter are “the summer soldier and sunshine patriot” who Thomas Paine spoke of back in 1776. It is up to the rest of us to carry the heaviest burden of the battle for liberty. The the fight is worth it as the price of freedom always has been high. As Paine noted in “The Crisis”: “it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
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