Thomas Paine to Obama: Why America’s “Original” Founder Still Matters Today

Adel:
Professor Kaye, it’s a pleasure to have you on our program. It’s a special series. Thank you for taking the time for this part two of our conversation about the American Revolution.

In part one of our interview, we discussed Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, how it came to be composed and why it was so important to the American Revolution. One of my key takeaways from our prior conversation was that common sense seems to be the impetus for independence. I remember you telling us in part one that even in the opening months of 1776, General Washington and his officers were still toasting King George III.

Prof. Kaye
At least in January of 1776, that is the case. In January of 1776.

Adel:
Then comes common sense and it becomes one of the important pushes towards independence. With all this talk about common sense, that pamphlet that was less than 50 pages here, I have a copy of it, I’ll hold it up for our audience, Common Sense.

Prof. Kaye
Let’s get into the text. What does it say? Are there any phrases or passages that you’d like to share with us?

A lot of stuff, but let me put it this way. Paine knew this. He knew that he had to dissuade Americans from feeling any attachment to the king, to parliament, and to the idea of the British constitution.

Keep in mind that the Americans saw themselves as British Americans. In fact, even those who were not British living in the colonies, Germans and Belgians, they gave them all over Europe. Even those folks prided themselves in what they believed to be the rights of freeborn Britons or freeborn Englishmen.

Rights that did not prevail always on the continent. In fact, rarely on the continent. That had to do with the idea of, you’re not tied to a place.

Serfdom has completely ended in England by this time. There was a sense also even that people had a right to protest out in the street. They didn’t have the right to vote because that was limited to only people with property.

In any case, the Americans themselves felt that they had these rights. In fact, the reason they were fighting the British, the rebellion was already underway, is because they were convinced, rightly so, that those rights were being denied to them as British subjects, you might say. Paine, when he opens Common Sense, does not even go near the question in any obvious way, well, in any kind of straightforward way of independence or creating a republic.

However, he opens up with a device that is not unusual for political writers in the 18th century. I believe Locke did similar kinds of things. That is, he begins by asking the reader to imagine a group of people who are removed from the rest of civilization.

How will they manage? He points out a short narrative of what they do. Well, they gather, they organize themselves into building homes and farmsteads, etc.

He says, in time, their numbers grow and there arises the need for some kind of organization of the community. He has this fascinating image. It is just wonderful where he says, everyone gathers under this big oak tree to discuss and deliberate, which is a very democratic vision.

I understand what he has done here is, number one, in essence, in a way, he is reminding people that they are not in Europe, they are not in Britain, they are in America at some remove from that other world, number one. Number two, he has now given us the one that it is natural to be sociable and to organize among themselves to create homes and farmsteads. Also, he is telling us that out of that sociability emerges naturally a democratic spirit that they will all meet to discuss how to better organize the community, what kind of rules and regulations might have to prevail.

Now, he goes on to basically to say that at a certain point, it may seem that government becomes essential. He says basically, this is interesting, he basically made the point that society is a good, government is a necessary evil. By the way, that line excites libertarians and anarchists alike.

In fact, they miss out on the key thing. He believes in freedom and liberties, but he is not a libertarian, he is not an anarchist at all. His position is that basically, the democratic government, which we may be capable of creating, exists nowhere else.

In other words, we have it in ourselves to create such a thing because the king has not been imposed upon us yet.

Adel:
He is saying that this is unique, this is in fact unique.

Prof. Kaye
We are embarking on a path that hasn’t been ventured on. Right. He will say that over and over again.

He actually says, everyone says, well, doesn’t Paine become an American exceptionalist? And I like to think he really is talking about America as unique. It has a unique moment in history.

Americans have an opportunity to do what no other group of people have had in the past. That is, in fact, he says it in the appendix, he says, we have it in our power to begin the world over again. What he means is that we can create this democratic kind of government.

In fact, Paine later said that if it was just a matter of independence, the American revolution, it would not have been worth pursuing. What makes it worth pursuing is the opportunity to create a new kind of government and polity.

Adel:
So if you became independent and you essentially had an American king and essentially, what’s the difference?

Prof. Kaye
That is fascinating. And then he got, go ahead. Sorry.

What do you want to ask? No, you said something really interesting.

Adel:
You said some people say that Paine is an American exceptionalist, but you modified it and said, no, he is, well, you didn’t say no, but you said, you asserted that he believed in the unique moment in that time.

Prof. Kaye
Right. In other words, America, yes, this is the fact, and this is important because it is echoed as an idea in Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. And this is what it is.

Basically, we have it in our power to begin the world over again. We have it in our power to create this democratic republic to show the world what ordinary people are capable of. Because first thing he does after he talks about that situation where they’ve been separated from, they’ve lived in isolation, relatively speaking, they’re organizing themselves.

He then goes on to take apart, literally to attack the British political order as oppressive and stupid, basically. Okay. As it means by which he’s eventually going to show Americans the idiocy of monarchy.

Adel:
And the whole while that he’s doing this in these 47 to 49 pages, he doesn’t use the word independence.

Prof. Kaye
Well, basically he does, I believe. The point is, he does do essentially that. He doesn’t, I don’t know if the word, does the word independence.

Now I’m blanking because, but I can tell you this, he does not use the word democracy, but he lays out a democratic, he calls it a charter, but it’s the idea of a constitution. The model he offers, the plan he offers is that would include the idea essentially of a bill of rights, essentially. Two key freedoms, he says, should be a part of this.

One is that your property should be secure. But the second one is the fact that there should be separation of church and state, freedom of religion. And he actually, very clear, he doesn’t hedge on this.

I believe it’s like five times in common sense, he makes it clear that he means separation of government and religion. And his punchline for all of that is this, the only role for government in religion is to make sure everyone can practice it as they please, or as they wish, whatever the term might be.

Adel:
Some of the foundation for asserting the separation of church and state, emphasizing and repeating it, as we discussed in our prior conversation, goes back to his own upbringing, Quaker father, Anglican mother.

Prof. Kaye
Right. That’s his own personal, that’s what he brings to it. But he’s also very much aware of this.

In New England, in several of the colonies of New England, the prominent church is the congregational church. That would be Massachusetts and Connecticut in particular. And they are effective, they’re all but state churches in those two colonies.

Others can practice it. Although, just a footnote to history, Roger Williams is basically driven away from the Massachusetts colony and creates Rhode Island for the sake of freedom of religion, because Baptists were driven out of Massachusetts. And then Vermont is basically, they’ve got their own struggle that’s going to be taking place.

And for a brief while, they didn’t call themselves a Republic of Vermont. But the leader of their movement, the leader of the Green Mountain Boys, as they were called, was- Was that Ethan Allen? Yes.

And what’s key there is he also was a deist. And he was absolutely about the idea of separation of church and state. Like Paine, he was a deist.

Okay. Now then in if you come to the middle colonies, the- So we’re talking Pennsylvania and New York. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey.

Yeah. Okay. There is no state church there other than in Pennsylvania was basically founded by Quakers.

And they’re powerful as a force, but it’s not a state church. And the diversity of religion in Philadelphia amazed Thomas Paine. Because they were, you name the Christian faith, they were there.

There were Jewish people. There were, remember Protestants didn’t view Catholics always as Christians, but Catholics too. I mean, they were all in Philadelphia.

In fact, and they were not in battle with each other. And he thought that was amazing. And then if you go to the South, now that’s where the Anglican, later to be known as the Episcopalians were prominent.

So it like Virginia and North Carolina. But he knew, this is the key thing. He knew, for example, that there was religious diversity in places and that people yearned for equality of faiths.

For example, I mean, in fact, it’s actually proven, it’s been shown that in Virginia, in key counties, that Paine’s common sense actually persuaded or gave the impulse to Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians to join in the revolution. Because they were afraid, the question for them is, well, why have a revolution if the Anglicans like Washington and others were just going to set up an Anglican church? They were afraid they might set up an Anglican bishop.

There were no bishops in the American colonies. Wow. That’s a big point.

And in Virginia, in fact, the Baptists had really been fighting for religious equality. And their original, I think there was a kind of like a bill of rights that came out of George Mason and Jefferson together assured the Baptists their equality. And similar things occurred elsewhere.

The point is, Americans in all their diversity wanted equality of faiths. So that’s one element that’s important in this common sense, this appeal to people’s understandings that America could be free of state churches.

Adel:
It’s an appeal, and also it’s somewhat of an assurance. If you join this movement, you will be part of the community.

Prof. Kaye
You won’t be shunned away. That’s the assumption. But I should explain that even after the revolution, even after the Constitution, even after the Bill of Rights, Massachusetts and Connecticut still demanded that everyone in the state pay taxes that went in part to the congregational church, like a tithe.

This is interesting too. Even if you were not a member of the church. Even if you were not.

Okay. I think it finally ended around 1832. Wow.

Okay. Yeah. Now, okay.

So crucial stuff, really crucial stuff.

Adel:
Yeah. So that’s separation of church and state. That’s one important point.

Prof. Kaye
Right. Or as Paine said, the government has no role in religion other than to guarantee people the right to practice their faith.

Adel:
Okay.

Prof. Kaye
Another thing was he went after, so he went after the king. Okay. He went after the king, and it wasn’t just he went after the king.

He went after the king and the very idea of hereditary ruler. By the way, people of the time said that his common sense was at times vulgar. Okay.

Vulgar. But vulgar didn’t mean dirty or naughty. What vulgar meant then was that it was a language that everyone understood.

It was not written for college graduates to understand. It was not written for the elite to understand. There were a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of pamphlets published in the American colonies before and during the revolution.

However, most of them barely sold. It sold maybe several hundred. The key thing is that Paine wrote very, he decided, I mean, he’s a working class guy.

He comes out of a working class family. He’s going to write so everyone can understand it because I’m not even sure he could have written in any other way. He does use a kind of, there are Quaker constructions in it, but that’s not like the instead of you, various things like that.

However, he writes it very much in a down to earth way. So it was in quotes vulgar. Vulgar means of the common people.

Kind of like in the vernacular. That’s right. Yeah.

Oh, very much in the vernacular. By the way, his father who was Quaker, when they sent Paine to school, apparently there were two tracks at the school. One track taught Latin and the other one did not.

They had to teach Latin because maybe one or more of the students wanted to go into the law eventually. Paine’s father said, absolutely not. No Latin.

That was the language of the elite and of the churches. The Anglican, not even of the Anglican church itself specifically, but especially the Catholic church.

Adel:
Yeah, the papacy.

Prof. Kaye
So Paine didn’t use foreign words when he wrote and didn’t use Latin at all. He probably imagined the reader to be somebody like himself. Americans were very literate compared to other places in the world.

So reading was going to be easy. And as a consequence, people read it in pubs, in coffee shops, they read it aloud. Out loud, they read it.

They read it in farm fields. I mean, it’s amazing where people reported how they heard the words of common sense. And I think I may have said last night, it sold 120,000 copies that spring.

Wow. And he took no royalties. He gave all the royalties, if there were any, collected to Washington’s army to buy mittens for the troops to be ready for the winter.

Adel:
Were there any phrases or lines from common sense that were sort of directly or derivatively turned into chants?

Prof. Kaye
You know, like revolutionary slogans or anything like that? Good question. That’s a very good question.

Well, I can’t tell you if that’s the case. I can tell you this, that common sense, I think I did mention this last time, common sense during the years of the revolution was the primary document. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We said that last time. So when troops gathered around a campfire, if they were going to make a toast, they toasted many things, but common sense was often, here’s to common sense, then they might toast the declaration after it and so on and so forth. Okay.

So there are other elements in this. Another one of these is that he made, so he says, look, he’s trying to get Americans to understand that they are Americans, that not only are they not British, but they are not merely Virginians or New Yorkers. He wants them to see themselves as Americans.

That’s really important. He actually says in Common Sense, he writes that it may seem that we all come from different places, or I don’t know if he uses the word countries, but we come from different places. But if an American is abroad, say, they will see each other as Americans.

In other words, he’s trying to call attention to the fact that they don’t even realize the depth of their identities. I’ll never forget that kind of thing, because one time when I was over in England, I was giving this big lecture at the London School of Economics, and at the little hotel that I was staying at, there was an African American guy who’s from New York, and we were both Americans. I mean, there was no sense of race at that moment.

I mean, we understood he was black, I was white, but we both identified as Americans, and we would speak about Americans as doing things differently, that kind of thing. And Paine was trying to get them to understand they’re Americans, their fates are tied together, and their identities are bound together.

Adel:
And this is a big deal, especially back then when states, well, back then there were colonies, were so far apart, you almost never communicated, or someone from Boston may never make it down to Charleston.

Prof. Kaye
It was almost like a different- If people, if they can conjure in their minds a map of the East Coast of the United States, and they all probably will realize that the cities of the East Coast are where they are, because they were at the mouth of a river. So Boston, Philadelphia, New York, right on down, okay? Which is not unusual in most countries.

But the thing is, the weather in the North American colonies, especially middle and Northern colonies, was pretty cold in the winter. There was no global warming at that time. So if you were going to send, if you were going to travel, if you’re going to travel from Boston, say, to Philadelphia, or Boston to Charleston, as you mentioned, you didn’t go overland if you could help it.

You got on a boat, and you sailed down. Because what would often happen is, especially in the winter, if you’re traveling by land, which would seem safer than the water, but frankly wasn’t necessarily, you might be traveling and you get to the river where you knew from, you know, reports and from maybe a map that there was a bridge there. And you got there, and the bridge was down, because the ice, especially, and this would be true in the spring, as the ice melts, it would, or even in the winter, might damage.

It’s all wooden bridges. And they couldn’t handle the freezing and the melting and all that. Which is why Thomas Paine, at the end of the revolution, started to make plans, and he designed an iron bridge that he wanted to build over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.

But he couldn’t raise the money in Philadelphia. There were no banks to borrow money from. So he said to Franklin, what do I do?

And that’s when Franklin said to him, you’ll need to go to London and Paris to raise the money. He didn’t want, he wasn’t planning on going back to Britain, or especially over to Canada. But he had no choice, because he was committed.

Remember, I think I said in our first episode, that Paine loved science, science and technology.

Adel:
Yeah, yeah. And we’ll get to his trip to Paris in a moment.

Prof. Kaye
Yeah. So I asked him to back to common sense.

So it opens up with this tale of America’s deepest past, which is a fantasy in some ways. It’s a legend more than anything else. And he makes the point of the sociability and democratic instincts of people.

And then he then attacks the British constitution, the king, the parliament, and the British constitution. He then goes on basically to talk about the stupidity and idiocy of kings. And by the way, there’s something I would read to you about that.

It’s a great line. So he says this. He wants to literally undermine any respect there is for monarchy, especially because people might think it’s divinely ordained, right?

He goes back to 1066. A French bastard, meaning William the Conqueror, landing with an army of bandits and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives is in plain terms, a very paltry, rascally original. It certainly has no divinity in it.

The plain truth is that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into. Okay. That’s first.

But then he goes on and he talks about one of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is that nature disapproves it. Otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion. Interpret that for us, please.

Adel:
An ass for a lion.

Prof. Kaye
In other words, this whole idea of Richard the Lionheart, that the king is the lion, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, well, nature disproves it because it’s all too often the case you end up with an ass.

He didn’t mean an ass in the vulgar sense. He meant a mule-ish character. And he then also says, the nearer any government approaches to a republic, the less business there is for a king.

Oh boy.

Adel:
He couldn’t get away with these things in England, obviously.

Prof. Kaye
Oh, he’s literally placing his head on the, I mean, he probably couldn’t. He definitely couldn’t. Then you should remember, I think I said last time that Benjamin Rush asked him to write about, to write this thing that would become common sense.

Because Rush said he couldn’t do it. He had too much to lose if he did.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
Okay. So another thing is this. So at a certain point he says, okay.

Oh, moreover, he says, kings bring on wars. And he reviews how England has constantly brought every, you know, from ancient times to the present is involved in wars because kings are battling for power. Okay.

Among, you know, like king versus king more than, and it’s not nation versus nation, it’s king versus king. And then he says, so why, why are we stuck here? Why, what are we going to do about this?

Okay. And he says, a government of our own is our natural right. In fact, he then says, maybe what we’re lacking is a plan.

So to get things moving, I have a plan. He says, let a continental conference be held. The conferring members being met, let their business be to frame a continental charter.

What he means is a constitution, a charter of the United Colonies, securing freedom and property to all men and above all things, the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience. Okay. And he goes on to, and he goes on and he lays it out.

And then he says, this is really good. He goes, but where say some is the King of America? He’s very well aware, right?

That this is a radical plan. I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above and does not make havoc of mankind like the royal brood of Britain. Yet that way may not appear to be defective in any earthly honors.

Let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter. Let it be brought forth, placed on the divine law, presumably he means, you know, the Bible, the word of God. Let a crown be placed thereupon by which the world may know that so far as we approve of monarchy that in America, and he does it in caps, the law is King.

The law is King for as in absolute governments, the King is law. So in free countries, the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other, but let, but in case there’s any illusion afterward arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished and scattered among the people whose right it is. So there’s just destroy any that destroy it and then pass out the remains of what after the destruction.

I mean, that’s pretty good stuff, right? That’s pretty good stuff.

Adel:
And as you were reading this, Professor Kay, I got to say this. Remember you told me about how he moved south to, I think the town of Lewis, because Lewis on the coast, right? Yeah.

Lewis on the coast that we discussed in the last.

Prof. Kaye
That’s in England.

Adel:
That’s in England. Yes. Yes.

Thank you. Um, he’s got to get some of this stuff from back in England.

Prof. Kaye
They probably were just, look, I’ll be crude about it. Like where does he get this stuff? He hated the monarchy.

He hated the British order. Okay. And you know, he, he discovered, it was like coming to America was like literally discovering not to be crude.

You know, it was like discovering a whole new universe of life, diversity. And now, and I’ll remind everyone, if they didn’t hear the first episode, that he did abhor the fact that there was slavery in America. That was something that he came out against.

Now here’s another thing. He really did believe in, in that idea of diversity. And I explained it.

Okay. He really did. He actually said that surely God intended for diversity of faiths.

Otherwise we wouldn’t all be here. Yeah. But the other thing, this is, to me, this is important.

He was an immigrant. Let’s not forget that. Okay.

And he believed that America should be a refuge for those who loved and needed liberty. I’ll read you the paragraph. It’s delicious.

Oh, ye that love mankind, ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth. Every spot of the world is overrun with oppression. Freedom has been hunted around the globe.

Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger and England has given her warning to depart. Receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Adel:
And he’s including places like Asia and Africa.

Prof. Kaye
Yeah. His point, I mean, he hasn’t excluded the idea of people coming from anywhere in the world, if they are liberty loving. Now, I’m not telling you he was as fond of an African American as he was as a white American.

But I can tell you that there is nothing racist about his arguments.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
Especially for that time. That is fascinating. He also, by the way, I should point out, some people mistakenly say that he called for women’s to vote.

I say mistakenly because I have yet to come across that. But there was little doubt that he believed women should have equal rights.

Adel:
Why do you say there’s little doubt? Have you seen his other writings?

Prof. Kaye
Oh, yeah. No, he’s very clear about, he’s very clear. Well, a best example I can give you, we’ll get to it later, is that when he writes the pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, which is where he lays out a model for social security, he includes boys and girls, men and women.

He discriminates not at all as to who is entitled to receive the benefits of that system.

Adel:
I see.

Prof. Kaye
And there are other places where he speaks similarly. But that, to me, was the real proof of his feminism.

Adel:
There’s a line, and I’m paraphrasing here. Did he say, in common sense, something to the following effect, an island should not rule a continent?

Prof. Kaye
Yes, he did. I mean, I didn’t want to spend the entire time talking about common sense. I’m always happy to talk about common sense.

Adel:
No, no, that’s just really interesting.

Prof. Kaye
He actually says, he’s trying to convince people of the imperative to separate. And he’s trying to point out that the illogical character of this island ruling a continent. I mean, it’s just not, it doesn’t make sense.

That’s one amongst many things that he lays out as reasons why. He gets to the point where it’s like, what are we doing? You know, we’ve already staged, he already knows that we’ve staged a rebellion, but they have yet to see what the rebellion might well be about.

Did I mention Edmund Burke last time in the episode?

Adel:
No, but we’re going to get to that in a moment. I actually have a specific question. You did, you did actually mention it.

Prof. Kaye
Yeah, because Burke was warning Parliament as a member of Parliament. He warned his fellow parliamentarians, we better not push too hard on those Americans. They’ve already staged a rebellion, they might stage a revolution.

And if they do, we might end up with a revolution of our own, because it’ll set a model to the world, which is exactly what Paine had in mind.

Adel:
Yeah, it may become contagious.

Prof. Kaye
Would you place Thomas Paine sort of in the pantheon of our founders? I think he was the original founder. Oh, wow.

Okay. Okay, so… Look, I mean, understand, basically the Continental Congress had to rely upon him to issue the call, right?

And he does so in a way which goes even beyond what a few of them might have ever wanted. And I did mention Abigail and John Adams last time, didn’t I?

Adel:
Yeah, you did. And Abigail was talking about women’s rights. Yeah.

Issue the call.

Prof. Kaye
That’s a big deal. This guy’s been my hero since I was 10 years old.

Adel:
So, Professor Kay, you know, after our interview, our first interview, I was just, I kept on thinking more about common sense. And I see, from my perspective, a deeply embedded irony in common sense. And I’ll share with you, and you tell me if I’m being too cynical, or I don’t know, perhaps too simplistic.

I think the irony is this, that the very revolutionary Americans whom common sense sort of ignited into action, would eventually, and I’m getting poetic here, but would eventually sort of want to douse the flames that the common sense started.

Prof. Kaye
So what I’m saying is that, like the elite of America that were pushing the revolution forward… No, pushing the rebellion. I’m sorry, pushing the rebellion forward, liked Thomas Paine’s common sense, but only to a limit.

Yes, they, I have, in the book, I recall, there are lines of each one of the founders as to how they viewed their more working class fellow Americans, you know, like, it might have been Washington who called them a grazing herd. Okay. Grazing herd.

Grazing herd. If I could find it quickly, I could. Well, the main thing to think about is this, John Adams, who was one of the most hotheaded of the continental congressmen.

First thing to understand is that he despised the idea of aristocracy, official aristocracy, but he feared the idea of democracy. Wow. And then I can tell you this, I included this in the book.

So common sense appears, Adams buys three copies and he sends them up to anybody, one for himself, two for Abigail, one for her to share. Did I mention the fact that he goes into the, it was time for him to get a shave. It was, this was not long after the publication, he goes in to get a shave in Philadelphia.

And keeping in mind the barber is there probably more to give men shaves than to ever really cut hair. Okay. And he sits in the chair and the barber has a blade in his hand, you with me?

Adel:
Yeah. Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
And he’s putting the blade towards Adam’s neck. And he says to him, oh, by the way, we’re going to be reading common sense aloud tonight at the bar, cafe, whatever. And Adams is probably thinking to himself, what the hell, this guy’s got a blade to my neck.

And he’s not eager for democracy. He doesn’t want barbers governing in America. Wow.

But Paine is more than happy to see a popular government. He’s a, he’s a small D Democrat. Yeah.

Yeah. He’s the original populist.

Adel:
Which one of, I will be listing your books for our audience, but which one of them in particular do you suggest they read for common sense?

Prof. Kaye
Well, I think they should read this. Could you promise Thomas Paine? Yeah, that one is, it’s literally, it’s Paine’s life and labors, and then its impact on America to this day.

To this day. Okay.

Adel:
And we’re going to get to actually a question about Thomas Paine now, but before we go there, I want to ask this question. And you sort of alluded to it before. Okay.

Prof. Kaye
Why didn’t Thomas Paine stay in America? Oh, he, he, he, because he had, he, his ambition was to build this iron bridge. The one that you were telling about.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
This is in the now 1780s. He’s been working, he’s working on this iron bridge, which by the way, was a damn good plan. I mean, nobody, everyone, there was, there’s a book or two on Thomas Paine’s bridge.

One is, it’s all about his effort to get the bridge, you know, he built a model. Paine, Franklin, who was basically the scientist of his day. He’s like a polymath.

Yeah. Well, yeah. By the way, during the revolution, there were occasions when there was one occasion where Washington and, and Paine were together and they were testing how gunpowder and other things, they wanted to create a system in which they could launch a giant arrow across Delaware, across the Schuylkill, I can’t remember why.

So they would work together on these projects. He had these, these things going on all the time. Wow.

But the bridge is his, was his real passion. So he got, he ends up and it’ll come up as we go forward. He, but it’s not, we’re not there yet.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
So, okay. So, so he’s going to, he leaves America. Well, the one thing I left out, which is important is, so he then enlisted in the, in a Pennsylvania militia to fight the British.

Okay. But, but the militia he’s joined when it heads up towards New York, where the British were landing 32,000 troops, the Pennsylvania militia men say to hell with this. And they went back to Philadelphia, but Paine did not.

He moved on to the camp of General Nathaniel Green, which was in, which was in Fort Lee across the river from New York city. Washington is now in New York city. Green is across the river with his men.

He’s, he’s, he’s basically, he’s a general serving under Washington. And he, so, so Paine is now in Fort Lee, New Jersey. I wish everyone was from New Jersey like I am because they would understand this.

The Hudson river is coming down from the North and it’s the, it’s literally there between New Jersey and New York. And it’s big. People shouldn’t underestimate the size of the Hudson river, but Fort Lee is on Palisades.

It’s high up. Californians will appreciate this. And from the Palisades, you could see like almost all of, you could see what’s going on across the river in New York.

And what he sees is not good because Washington is being driven back to the North. And it, and across from, directly across from the Palisades of Fort Lee is Washington Heights as it’s called now, which is a big Dominican neighborhood now, by the way, for what it’s worth. So they’re going to, they’re going to retreat across the river and Washington and his troops, not all of them, some are staying behind unfortunately, and they come across and it’s at that point there begins the retreat across New Jersey.

And this is, this is December. It is cold. So Green introduces Paine.

I mean, Paine is an important person. He’s the guy who wrote Common Sense. None of this would be, would be a revolution if it weren’t for Thomas Paine.

Or as somebody said, without the pen of Paine, Washington’s sword would have been wielded in vain. So Green and Paine are very close together. By the way, Green was a Quaker willing to fight for the revolution.

And Paine had grown up a Quaker, you know, his father was a Quaker. So they became very close, Green and Paine. So Green introduces Paine to Washington and Washington had always wanted to meet Paine.

He wanted to meet the man who, who penned that pamphlet. And they, and together, along with what forces remain, they start retreating across New Jersey. And it, as from what I can tell, and other historians have come to the same kind of thing, somewhere to the South, to the South of Fort Lee, say in the, maybe what would be not far from present day Newark, Essex County, something like that.

It’s, Washington asks Paine to put his pen to good use again. He’s already been writing sort of news reports back to Philadelphia as a journal, in a journalistic way. And by the way, he’s, he’s portraying this retreat as if it’s brilliant, which by the way, it’s just simply a retreat at this point.

But he’s, so he’s a kind of propagandist and a journalist at the same time. But so Paine is now, he’s convinced by Washington and General Green that he has to write again to, to spur the revolution on, otherwise all might be lost. And it said, he sat down by the campfire alongside the soldiers who were at that, at that particular spot.

And he says, and it’s a famous pamphlet, the crisis, the first of the American crisis papers. The line that it opens with is probably one of the, I say this unreservedly, if it’s not the most, it is surely one of the top 10 most quoted lines of American history. These are the times that try men’s souls, souls.

By the way, if you Google it, you’ll see that it’s not unusual for the coach who’s got the losing team at halftime, whatever the sport, to say to his, to say to his boys or his girls, these are the times that try, try our souls. You know, he’s trying to rouse them to, to go. So Paine, Paine begins to write this and he’s writing this wherever they stop along the way.

And by the way, men are leaving Washington’s army.

Adel:
They’re deserting.

Prof. Kaye
Well, some of them signed on like minute men. They didn’t sign on as regular soldiers. Others are saying, others are saying to themselves, hell, this is, this, this is impossible.

I mean, it’s cold, there’s snow on the ground. And by the way, New Jersey was governed, was led by a Tory governor, a loyalist, who was by the way, Benjamin Franklin’s son.

Adel:
Legitimate son.

Prof. Kaye
Legitimate son. Okay. So they’re coming across New Jersey and things are looking bad.

And a lot of the people in New Jersey were probably loyalists as well. So the, the army is reducing and shrinking and reducing and shrinking. And they’re headed towards the river, the Delaware.

The idea was they would try to take refuge in Philadelphia or near Philadelphia. Paine says to Washington, I’ve finished the pamphlet. I just want to get it back to Philadelphia so we can get it into print.

Washington’s army goes just outside of Philadelphia. It’s not Valley Forge, that’s a year. Paine, it goes into Philadelphia and it’s, it’s printed and it’s sent to Washington’s army, supplies of it.

Washington reads it and then orders his, he orders his officers to read the pamphlet to their men before they’re going to cross the Delaware and stage a surprise attack on the Hessian soldiers, the German soldiers who are part of the King’s army. Because Hess, is that what it’s called? Anyhow, over in Germany, whatever the territory is called Hess or Hessian, that is under his, he’s got, he, he, he’s German.

Remember George, George I, II, III, they were Hanoverians. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, but it’s also the case, I always just ask myself, wait a minute, how’d they get the boats to go back across the Delaware if, if, if people were abandoning the, when the boat, when the, what do you call it? The boat men, when they read the pamphlet, they’ve provided the boats, they were ready to join.

And what’s the name of that second pamphlet? It’s, it’s for, it’s the first of the American crisis papers, just simply called the crisis. Wow.

Wow. And that’s when they, that’s when they cross the river, they surprise the Hessians and they win their first battle, the Battle of Trenton. And then they go on to Princeton and beat the Britain, British at Princeton.

Yeah.

Adel:
Yeah. It’s funny, Paine plays such an important role in all of these.

Prof. Kaye
So let’s go back to, again, to what I asked. Okay. So during the revolution, Paine then ends up serving for a while in a role for the Continental Congress.

He becomes the secretary of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is not, he’s not the, he doesn’t head the committee. He’s just the secretary to the committee. There’s a lot of very good things I could tell you.

I’m not going to bother to tell you. At the end of the revolution, he writes, at the end of the revolution, he has written 13 crisis papers. He did that because he wanted each crisis paper to represent, you know, like part of the American, new American United States.

Okay. He actually wrote more than 13, but when he started to write more than 13, he gave them different names so they wouldn’t disrupt the 13 number.

Adel:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
After that, and at the end, he writes a great final crisis and he talks about the imperative of unity, of solidarity. Okay. That they should not divide and fall apart.

Okay. I mean, he’s, I mean, all of human history depends on what these Americans will be doing. And then he goes to any, and then from there he goes to live in, I guess, over in New Jersey.

He’s designing the bridge. Washington and others try to get him some support for what, for what he had accomplished. The Southern colonies, if I’m not mistaken, will give nothing to Paine’s welfare.

Cause they, they probably because he talked about ending slavery.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
Yeah. But anyhow, the point being that Franklin tells him you need money for this project, go to London and Paris. He goes to London and Paris and he ends up moving back and forth between London and Paris to raise money.

He gets endorsements and he builds a quarter size version of the bridge in England. And people would have to pay to walk across this river. He probably did it over a Creek somewhere.

So is this, so this is after the Paris peace treaty. So this is. We’re talking like 1787 to 1789.

So he’s not here when the constitution is being, but this is what happens. He’s going back and forth July 14th, 1789, the storming of the Bastille, the French revolution begins.

Adel:
Paine is there?

Prof. Kaye
He’s in London at the time. But of course he’s, he’s intended to go back to Paris. I mean, he’s back and forth.

So at this time is when Edmund, well, Edmund Burke writes reflections on the revolution of France. It’s the it’s in some ways, it’s like the conservative manifesto of the, of the day. And Edmund Burke became known as the father of modern conservatism.

And it is an attack on the revolution for its audacity and overthrowing the French monarchy. And it’s intended as a warning to the British not to mess with tradition and hierarchy and community. Now, Paine is absolutely upset about this because he, he knew that although Burke wasn’t a friend of the revolution to begin with, he had had some sympathy for the American cause.

Now other people begin to write in opposition to Paine, to Burke’s pamphlet, which is sizable, including a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft, who is now considered the mother, the mother of modern feminism, the godmother or mother of modern feminism. Oh, wow. Because she wrote a book, I was like, Reflection on the Rights of Women, something like that.

She defends, you know, the whole idea, this is a revolutionary moment and women should be accorded a certain equality.

Adel:
But by the way, I want to inject a personal note here. I told you in our last interview that I had read Thomas Paine. Yeah.

I’m just, for whatever reason, just being me, I’ve also read Reflections on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke.

Prof. Kaye
It’s a great work. But this is what I want to say. It was very hard to read.

Well, yeah, because…

Adel:
It was very hard to read.

Prof. Kaye
He was educated. He was a member of parliament. So Paine, once again, replies.

It’s called, it’s in two parts. Rights of Man 1 is the first part. Paine was involved when, here’s what happens.

So Paine decides, he’s going to go to, let me go back a bit. He hasn’t written Rights of Man yet. He goes, he gets to, he gets to, he goes to the coast.

He travels across and to make the long story short, he gets elected to the French National Assembly because he’s Thomas Paine.

Adel:
Oh, wow.

Prof. Kaye
Well, first, when he first arrived, that’s eventually, sorry, I’m jumping the gun. When he gets to Paris, Lafayette, who at this point is the head of the new government, Lafayette gives Paine the key to the Bastille. Wow.

But it’s not for Paine to own. It’s for Paine to take back to America to give to Washington. Lafayette had been an officer under Washington during the revolution.

But so Paine goes back, he’s back and forth.

Adel:
Paine is such an important person.

Prof. Kaye
People at that time recognize how important he is. He was a celebrity. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. He was common sense. So when Paine, at one time, he does publish his book, the pamphlet, Rights of Man, the first one, which is a direct attack on the British monarchy.

Direct attack.

Adel:
It’s kind of a rebuttal to Edmund Burke’s.

Prof. Kaye
A rebuttal and a total trashing of his argument.

Adel:
Okay.

Prof. Kaye
And it becomes a bestseller in Britain and in its translation on the continent. He’s now a celebrity on both sides for his writing. And what happens is the British government wants to shut him down.

So they issue an arrest of, he should be arrested. And the great poet, William Blake, who is a friend of Paine’s, learns of this arrest warrant going out. He tells Paine, you got to get out of the country.

So Paine takes the first coach he can to the coast, he crosses back to France, to Calais, arrives in Calais. And they’re all, it’s like a festival to welcome Paine to France. Okay.

Why? Because he has been elected to the French National Assembly. Wow.

Now, keep in mind, he didn’t understand French. This is a problem. Okay.

This is a problem. To make the long story short, he joins the assembly, but he, there were the Girondins and the Jacobins. The Jacobins were the ones who literally, they were all willing to take off the heads of aristocrats.

Okay. But it was the Jacobins who really wanted to go all out. Now, and the big trial is a big trial.

What to do with the king and his wife. Why? Because they had already been sort of confined to their palace.

But one night they decide they’re going to escape. There was no talk early on of executing the king, but he tries to escape. And he’s captured and they’re brought back to Paris.

And then the question is, what do we do? We’ll put him on trial for treason or something like that. And in the trial, he’s found guilty of treason.

And then the question is, how will we sentence him? And the Jacobins who are in charge now, Ropespierre is the key figure here. They’re calling for his execution.

Paine does not believe in capital punishment. Wow. Back then.

So he stands up and says, you know, he has a better idea. He suggests that the king and his family be sent to America to learn about Republican democracy, basically. And the Jacobins see him now as their enemy.

And they’re going to come after him. Anyhow, so they don’t immediately arrest him. Wow.

They don’t immediately. Eventually, here’s the other thing that happens. The Jacobins go out of their way to devastate the Catholic Church.

They want to suppress the church as a royalist institution. OK, Paine at first thinks it’s OK, separation of church and state. However, they go a step too far.

They set up their own religion, a sort of civic religion, which denies God. And Paine is no friend of Catholicism, but he’s not an atheist. And as a consequence, he begins to write.

By the way, along the way, he already wrote two volumes for rights of man, two volumes. He now begins to write something called The Age of Reason, which everyone thinks is like this atheist argument, but it’s not. It’s a deist argument.

He wrote it in defense of God. It’s an attack on organized religion and a defense of God. He denies the truth of the Bible or any Bibles.

He said, look, they’re written by men. How do they know what God knows or God says or whatever else? He says the proof of God’s, if you like, goodness is the earth and the heavens themselves, because he has created this for humanity.

This is it. OK, they’ve already decided they’re going to get him for what he did in the National Assembly. They arrest him.

They throw him in jail. The French arrest Paine? Yes.

Now, this is interesting. Paine says, but I’m in it. He says they and they accuse him of being British as well.

And he says, I’m an American. So then the government calls in Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador to France. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gouverneur Morris is one of those elite figures of the revolution who despised Thomas Paine because he was such a radical Democrat. And there were some other things that occurred that led Gouverneur Morris. So Morris says, no, no, he’s not one of us.

And so Paine is stuck in this prison with, not alone, but he’s stuck in this prison for the time being. And the tragedy is, is that he thinks that Washington has abandoned him. But it’s quite likely or possible that Gouverneur Morris never reported back to Washington that Paine is imprisoned.

So this will come up a bit later. That is so sad. Very sad.

OK, so he’s scheduled for execution, Paine. Here it comes. He’s scheduled for execution.

He’s sick. He gets sick in prison, but he’s scheduled for execution. Now, the way it worked is these prison cells, they actually converted old hotels into prisons.

They had two doors on every room. There was an outer door and an inner door. The inner door, they may well have, I don’t know what exactly, but it might well have been the cell door, the inner door.

OK, and the outer door was wooden, the classic wooden door. So what they used to do is, at night, the executioner’s team would go around and mark the doors of the condemned. Paine shared his cell with two, I think two Danes or two Swedes, something like that.

So when they came, what had happened was the two other men in the cell had told the guard already before the executioner’s men came around, we have a very sick inmate here. Can you please leave the door open so we can get air into this room? And they left the door.

No, no, no, no, no. Sorry. The guy came around and marked the door.

That’s it. Mark the door. I got to get the story.

Sorry, I’m telling you this wrong. Oh, that’s right. They came around and marked the door on the wrong side.

Yes. So there’s the instead of marking the door on the other side, since the door was open, they marked the inside of the door, which was now facing out. You know, okay.

So the next morning when the door was closed by the guards, after the night, when the executioner’s men came around, there was no mark on the door. So by accident, Paine survives. Okay.

And then he publishes this age of reason. And he also, so eventually, fortunately, Gouverneur Morris is sent home, is recalled. This would have been because the change of government, maybe it was Adams, it doesn’t matter.

But the man who is now the ambassador to France is James Monroe.

Adel:
The future president.

Prof. Kaye
Yes. Monroe was a Paineite. He absolutely adored, he was young during the revolution, but he adored Paine.

And he secures the release of Paine and has him move into his residence. He and his wife have him move into the residence to recover. And I think he spent like two years in the Monroe household.

Wow. But he makes a mistake in some ways. He is so angry that Washington had, he believes that Washington had abandoned him.

We don’t know for a fact either way. He writes an open letter to Washington.

Adel:
An open letter.

Prof. Kaye
Yes. It’s not a personal letter. It’s an open letter, which is sent to Philadelphia.

And it appears by this time in the 1790s, if you like, the new American political class is dividing in two, the Federalists and Republicans, Republican Democrats. It’s actually called Democratic Republicans, but the name they took on was Republican. And a Jeffersonian, which was the Republican side, the Jeffersonian newspaper in Philadelphia published this letter.

And it was an attack on Washington, accusing him of having been a mediocre general. And then, you know, it just does him no service whatsoever. And Washington must have been insulted badly.

But in any case, the Federalists now despise, if they didn’t dislike him before, they despise Paine. Wow. So Jefferson, when he’s elected in 1800, he requests, he sends a letter to Paine, come home, come back to America.

And the only reason he hadn’t gone already is he’s really fearful that if he gets on a French boat, French ship, that the British will stop the ship and he’ll be arrested. And who knows what will be done to him by the British. Well, Jefferson tells him, come home, I’ll send an American ship for you.

He still hesitates. He actually believes at first that Napoleon is, he believes that Napoleon can carry the French ideas all across the continent, which is, of course, what Napoleon first appeared to be doing.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
Eventually, though, Paine realizes it’s time to go home. And he comes back to Philadelphia, welcomed by Jefferson. Jefferson is the one founder who never, who always remained a friend of Paine, by the way.

Yeah. Adams despises Paine. I mean, truly despises him.

If I could read to you what he said, which is just amazing. I mean, Jefferson and Adams had a falling out as a consequence of the split between Federalists and Republicans. And Jefferson beat Adams in the 1800 election.

Adel:
Yeah.

Prof. Kaye
So Adams was not going to have anything to do with Jefferson ever again. But Abigail Adams forced them to begin a correspondence. They should make contact with each other.

And, hold on, two seconds. So in their correspondence, Adams at several times just literally curses Paine’s name. I mean, badly.

Jefferson admired Paine. Jefferson, when asked, you know, who was the finest writer of the revolution, he would say Paine. He did.

So here’s, this is what happens. The year is 1805.

Adel:
Okay. So Jefferson is president at this point.

Prof. Kaye
Yes, Jefferson is president. And the University of Pennsylvania has, by the way, given Paine, apparently given Paine an honorary master’s degree to honor him. The man who’s the actual president of the university there is friends with Adams.

Adel:
Okay.

Prof. Kaye
I’m forgetting his name. He was, I think, a famous chemist or doctor, whatever. And in a letter, this man said something either about Paine or about, and he used the term age of reason, whatever it was.

And by the way, I want everyone to know that all of these most famous of our founders, they were all non-believers in the Trinity. Even Washington, Adams, Jefferson did not believe in the Christian Trinity at all. They believed in God, but not the Trinity.

But they never made that, they never revealed that, so to speak, other than Jefferson. Jefferson actually was openly, he was a deist. He didn’t brag about it, but he wrote things of a deist sort.

Franklin was a deist. Okay. Listen to this though.

So the guy wrote to Adams and Adams, this is Adams’ reply, because I think that this head of the university told Adams they should call the age in which we live the age of reason. This is Adams’ reply. I am willing you should call this the age of frivolity as you do, and would not object if you had named it the age of folly, vice, frenzy, fury, brutality, demons, and bone apart, or even Thomas Paine, or the age of the burning brand from the bottomless pit, or anything but the age of reason.

I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last 30 years than Tom Paine. Now it sounds like this is about to be a compliment, right?

Adel:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Prof. Kaye
But listen, there can be no more severe satire on the age, for such a mongrel between pigs and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the paltry of mankind to run through such a career of mischief. And he says, sarcastically, call it then the age of pain. He despises pain, but what he’s revealing is he knows that pain was probably the most important figure of the age.

He’s saying it.

Adel:
Yeah, he’s saying it.

Prof. Kaye
He hates him. And in the course of his letters with Jefferson, he repeats that kind of stuff. Now, I mean, I get it that John Adams did not believe in democracy.

Adel:
You made that clear earlier in this conversation. Also, you alluded to it in our last interview. So that’s one thing.

I’m there with you.

Prof. Kaye
But despise pain to this level. This is like a visceral, emotional, loathing. Why?

Look, he wrote somewhere about that common sense was a crapulous mess. That’s in writing. Why?

Every time he did that, he was revealing his jealousy. He was jealous of the other founders and jealous that pain would become this world historic figure. What a small man John Adams was.

Yeah, and by the way, there was that HBO series on John Adams.

Adel:
Yeah, yeah. You know, I love the book, by the way. I mean, he’s an important president.

Prof. Kaye
But in this case. Well, the book is that book is terribly inadequate. I will tell you a good really terrible.

Yes. Number one. Number two, I don’t believe the TV series even mentions Thomas Paine, which is an HBO series.

I don’t recall. Huh? That’s really interesting.

Exactly. That’s really interesting. There’s this crew of historians who never they just don’t get it.

The just don’t get it. What can I tell you? Okay, let’s take a break here in the next segment.

I’ll ask Professor K this question.

Adel:
If he were alive, what would Thomas Paine say about America now? We’ll be right back. Professor K, after we ended our prior conversation, the part one of our interview, you made the following comment that I quote.

After Jefferson, at least the pompous, the pious, the powerful, the privileged, they despise Paine’s memory, end quote. And then you explained that they tried to suppress it. So we got we got I got the story from the last part about how John Adams hated him.

Gouverneur Morris.

Prof. Kaye
Well, let me put it so people understand the context for 200 years. I kid you not. For 200 years, that group of people you just cited that I spoke of, the pompous, the privileged, the powerful, whatever.

Yeah. Prosperous. The pious.

Everything pious. They did everything they could to try to suppress his memory. Really?

I mean, is this- And when they couldn’t suppress it, they did everything to besmirch it. They told stories about Paine that were like wild. So, for example, they would talk about how this and this was true in England, too.

They tried to do the same thing, but they would talk about how if young women or if women would read Paine’s writings, they would faint. OK, if villages would be influenced too much by Paine’s work, earthquakes would happen. They portrayed him as a drunk.

They portrayed him as if he had literally, you know, almost killed his first his second They just literally said, look what he did to his wives. I mean, they portrayed him in the ugliest of ways. OK.

Does this include the political class? Yeah, well, here, yes, absolutely. But this is the key thing.

So that story, if you read any biographies of Paine until you got to mine, say, you would find out that Paine’s memory was suppressed, that he was the forgotten founder. So I wrote my original book, my original idea for The Problems of Paine and The Problems of America, the contract itself was to write a book about Thomas Paine’s life and labors and the suppression of his memory. And then I and then when I started my research, I discovered that all of us had been wrong in every generation, even in every generation from the moment from the end of the revolution right through to the age of FDR. As much as they tried to suppress his memory, it turned out that whatever the progressive movement of the day was, whether it was free thinking or abolition or, you know, women’s suffrage or the new the new the labor movement of the first throughout the 19th century. And I’m leaving out some other movements.

But in any every one of these movements, they all wanted to to ground themselves in the revolution, in the promise of America. I think in the last in our last interview, you even mentioned MLK. Oh, so let me go.

Let me go. So this goes all the way through American history. He was never forgotten.

His writings were never out of print in this country. Even the 19th century spiritualists. Who were quite often women involved, even in women’s movement, they discovered Paine and they claim to have had there were some who wrote books as if they had had a seance with Thomas.

But that’s the that strikes us as silly, but I can expose it on another occasion. The most important thing is that even Abraham Lincoln, as a young man in the 1830s, had read Paine and wrote his own little version of The Age of Reason. He became essentially a deist.

When he ran for office, his friends threw his work, Lincoln’s work in the fire. He didn’t want to be called out as an atheist. They wanted to protect Lincoln.

The man who the professor of English and American literature at Rutgers, who edited, his name is Roy Basler or Basler, who at Rutgers, who edited Lincoln’s collected writings. I’ve got the full collection downstairs, as I have the full collection of FDR’s writings up here, and Paine’s I have downstairs as well. He said, forget the Prairie schoolmaster who taught Lincoln and supposedly how to read and write properly.

It was his stepmother who he was very close to who taught him how to read. This guy Basler said, the Prairie schoolmaster may well have taught him how to write, but the man who taught him how to write the great speeches that he wrote was Thomas Paine, that he literally imbibed Paine’s writing style. Well, so this doesn’t sound like suppression.

He’s been alive. No, no, but Lincoln never mentioned Paine’s name ever. I could show you echoes of Paine in Lincoln, but he never publicly mentioned Paine’s name.

He would have been torn apart for having done so because the pompous, the pious and the privilege would have said, this man’s an atheist. He can’t be president of the United States. Teddy Roosevelt wrote a biography of Gouverneur Morris, the man who was the ambassador, right?

Who literally turned his back on Paine and left Paine to rot. Morris reports on that and in his book on Gouverneur Morris says Paine was a filthy little atheist, which is what Paine wasn’t filthy. He was not little.

He was about 5’10”, which at that time in history was pretty good height, by the way. And he wasn’t an atheist. He was a deist, not an atheist.

He defended God against atheists of all sorts. Okay, so the first president of the United States, oh, by the way, he’s taken, he’s challenged on that, Roosevelt. I believe some, he didn’t, I don’t think he apologized, but one of his people, people, aides did.

The point is the first president of the United States to literally openly talk about Thomas Paine, use him in his speeches, was Franklin Roosevelt. After Jefferson, it was Franklin Roosevelt, all the way through. And by the way, Eleanor Roosevelt, this, you use the video, right?

Adel:
Yes.

Prof. Kaye
Eleanor Roosevelt in 19, I think it was 1939, 40, wrote this book, The Moral Basis of Democracy.

Adel:
The Moral Basis of Democracy. Right.

Prof. Kaye
And in this book, the man who gets the greatest attention is Thomas Paine. Not the whole way through, but like five pages or so.

Adel:
So after Jefferson, no American politician dare mention Paine’s name.

Prof. Kaye
A lot of intellectuals did. Yeah. And certain literary figures did.

Mark Twain thought Thomas Paine was one of the three greatest men in human history. And there were others who felt the same. Thomas Edison felt Thomas Paine was one of the greatest people in human history.

I mean, they could, but they weren’t running for office. Yeah. Okay.

So why? I’ll give you another good one. So Republicans didn’t touch Paine, right?

The Democrats now could, because Roosevelt had done so. In 1964, Barry Goldwater won the nomination for the Republican, to be the Republican candidate for president. He is the foremost political conservative.

He was a senator from Arizona.

Adel:
Yep.

Prof. Kaye
And he had, I forget who wrote the first drafts. He had someone write a draft for his acceptance speech. He didn’t write his own speech.

And he didn’t like it. So somebody said to him, wait, there’s this political science, I don’t know if he was law and political science, but there’s this professor in Ohio, okay, named Harry Jaffa, a conservative intellectual. They contacted Harry Jaffa to write the speech.

And he wrote the speech. And the key, the most memorable line of the speech, and I’ll tell you what happened, I wanted to know about Paine’s memory. So a very dear friend of mine who was a leading conservative writer, I said to him, I’ve got to talk to Harry Jaffa.

I heard this rumor that he wrote Goldwater’s speech in 64. It wasn’t a rumor. It turns out everyone knew that.

So I got to find this thing here. So there’s a line in his speech, which is Thomas Paine’s. It’s literally, but they changed, it’s a line drawn from Paine.

Thomas Paine wrote in a pamphlet while he was in England, hold on, moderation in temper. Moderation in temper is a virtue. Moderation in principle is a vice.

Harry Jaffa, I talked, I interviewed, I talked to him on the phone. He didn’t know my politics and he figured I was being introduced to him by a conservative. I must be a conservative, which I’m not and never have been.

So I was talking about how he came up with this line that he, that was drawn from Paine because the line he gave to Goldwater was, which by the way, is the famous line in Goldwater’s speech.

Barry Goldwater had avoided mentioning Paine’s name in his own acceptance speech, even as he drew directly on Paine’s words.

Paine’s words, moderation and temper is always a virtue, but moderation principle is a species of vice. And what Goldwater said was extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

So, and I thought, wow, it’s amazing. Now, the first Republican president to quote Paine is Ronald Reagan. And that blew me away.

In fact, one of the reasons I think I probably came to write about Paine was because when I heard him give this speech, Reagan, back in 1980, I couldn’t believe it. I was actually pissed. Wait, in 1980, he was, he was running for.

Yes, this was when he, here’s what it is. He used it in his acceptance speech. He used Thomas Paine.

He referred to Thomas Paine in his acceptance speech. Now consider this, from the time of Roosevelt on, Democrats had quoted Thomas Paine, but they quoted Paine, the patriot, most of all. Reagan did something unbelievable.

So here he is, he’s accepting the Republican nomination for president. He is the conservative figure in America of the day. In his speech, he actually refers to three figures who probably would have had nothing to do with conservatism.

Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Thomas Paine. He names Thomas Paine? He named, wait, I’m going to blow you away with this one.

Okay. He quotes Thomas Paine’s most radical line. Wow.

He says, we have it in our power to begin the world over again. This was his way of declaring what came to be called the Reagan revolution. Yeah.

Wow. And just to give you a contrast to that, Barack Obama, in his inaugural address, first inaugural address in, what year was that? 2000 and…

Inaugural address, what’s that?

Adel:
2010.

Prof. Kaye
2010, right?

Adel:
No, 2009, January 2009.

Prof. Kaye
And it was probably then 81 when Reagan…

Adel:
Yeah. January 20, 81.

Prof. Kaye
Anyway, Obama had an evangelical minister do the invocation. Is that what they call it at the inaugural address? I think so, yeah.

In his inaugural address, Obama talks about, because of the crisis that we were going through.

Adel:
Yeah, the great depression.

Prof. Kaye
Washington, I’m sitting there, I was in Washington, though I wasn’t out on the mall with everyone when Obama spoke. But Obama says the effect of, Washington had his men read this line to his troops. I got to get something to…

I’m dry, I don’t have water, so I’m going to get something to suck on. Yeah, here we go. The line was a line straight out of that first crisis paper by Thomas Paine.

Straight out of it. Wasn’t these the times… It’s a bit further on.

It’s like where Paine says, we have to come forth, we have to stand forth in support of the revolution, a line like that, right? Yeah, and the crisis paper goes back to where he was with General Lee. Yeah, with, no, Green.

Green, Green, I’m sorry. Green and Washington. The two of them retreating across New Jersey.

Okay. So it’s great. I hear the line and then I think to myself, I know that line because he doesn’t say the crisis, he just says Washington had his men, had his officers tell the men…

I said, wow. And then I get a text from Bill Moyers and I said, Harvey, did I just hear Barack Obama quote Thomas Paine? I quickly ran to my sister’s computer, looked it up and I said, yeah.

And then I thought, wait a minute, but he didn’t mention Thomas Paine’s name. Is that because he had an evangelical Christian minister? Just, you know, do the invocation.

He doesn’t want to upset the evangelicals. Yeah. But I have to tell you, very unimaginative.

Reagan actually went before the National Convention of Evangelicals and quoted Thomas Paine there as well. Did he know that he’s quoting Thomas Paine? Who?

Reagan. Reagan used his name. He said, as Thomas Paine said, we have it in our power to begin the world over again.

Now, so I wondered, how did this happen? Yeah. So I contacted him.

This is when I’m writing my book, I’m trying to figure this out. So my friend in Washington, who’s a conservative writer, very important conservative writer, he gave me the list of names of Reagan speechwriters. So I contacted each one of them and not one of them knew exactly where Reagan came across those words.

So then I looked further. During World War II, there was a book published titled Citizen Paine by a great, a really fine writer named Howard Fast. And one thing I did know is Reagan loved to read popular history.

Loved it. OK, so it’s possible he picked up Paine’s words then. That’s one.

Two, and maybe he looked into it further. He was known during the war, Reagan. He was an FDR Democrat originally.

He was very much a liberal and progressive. And it’s possible he was turned on to Paine by Roosevelt’s words. Possible.

The second thing was he did a recording, which is available on disc, which it sort of tells a short history of the revolution that was back in the 60s. Maybe he picked it up then. Then somebody told me there was a conservative magazine, another very popular one.

Whenever Reagan, I spoke to Reagan’s right hand person, basically the guy who ran his campaign, helped run his campaign back in the campaign he lost, I believe. That would have been…

Adel:
That would have been what?

Prof. Kaye
He won the governor’s race. And then there was the… Not do that.

1976, he lost. Yeah. And Pete Hannaford, who I think was still with him in 2000, late…

Not 2000, in 1979, 80. Hannaford said, this is what Reagan did. They would go by plane from one place to the other.

And they would always get a first class, two seats in first class, obviously. And they didn’t have their own plane. They’d go on a flight.

And Hannaford took the aisle seat and Reagan took the window seat. So he wouldn’t be bothered by people walking by. And he would then, either they were five by seven or three by five cards.

He had his notes for his stump speech, for his ideas. And it may well be that he was reading this little magazine, which is quite possible, because it was 1976.

Adel:
Okay.

Prof. Kaye
That was the bicentennial year. And he might’ve come across eight words that year. But in any case, he…

Reagan was smarter than… Everyone underestimated Reagan. I didn’t like his politics.

I despised his politics. But I can tell you, I admired his capacity to speak to his fellow Americans. And I think everyone underestimated just how smart he was.

There was an actor or this and that. But man, he knew what to do. Even his ugliest stuff, he knew how to reach an audience.

Because when he went down, he opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were killed by the Klan. Two Jewish boys out of New York and one black guy from the South. And he opened it there.

Basically, he’s saying, you know… He didn’t mention what took place there. But to go there, of all places, to launch a campaign, is to basically tell white Southerners, you don’t have to worry about me.

Yeah.

Adel:
Let’s say… Let’s say Paine was here. Yeah.

He is, as I can think of him. Yeah. The way you talk about him, it’s as if he’s here.

So if he were alive, what would Paine think of Americans as citizens, think of our politics, where we are?

Prof. Kaye
What would he say? I think he would be absolutely shocked. Shocked?

Shocked at the degree of inequality that we’ve allowed to prevail during these past 50 years. We’ve allowed a new class of aristocrats, he would say. How could you have these…

The heads of these tech companies. They live and they operate and they shape the political realm as if they were the aristocrats of the 18th century. I’m sure he would say that.

And he would be shocked that we’ve allowed… That we’ve allowed certain kinds of rights that we have secured to be threatened as they’re being threatened.

Adel:
Professor Kaye, if you wanted our audience to remember just one point about common sense, what would it be?

Prof. Kaye
Thomas Paine’s common sense, written in a language all of his fellow citizens to be could understand, was the argument that turned a colonial rebellion into a revolution for independence and the makings of a democratic republic.

Adel:
Well, that’s profound. Professor Kaye, thank you so much for educating me and our audience about the American Revolution. And to our audience, if you know of any history that could provide more perspective about the American Revolution, please share it with us and tell us what’s your perspective.

Prof. Kaye
Thank you so very much, Professor Kaye, for this part two. Thank you for allowing me two episodes. I feel endowed.

It was wonderful.