Politics Girl on Thomas Paine

A base hit with a couple of strikes

A friend of this blog and fan of the Politics Girl podcast sent a link to the 4th of July podcast that centers in great part on Thomas Paine. Any time someone as widely followed as Political Girl covers Paine in whatever form, this is glad tidings. Links at the bottom of the page will take you to the actual Political Girl podcast and website.

Political Girl is Leigh McGowan, age 47 (probably 48 now0), photographer, writer, blogger. Her Instagram pages says “Mother, wife, writer, photographer, vlogger, political junkie, PH patient. The last might dictate my life, but the others define it.” PH is pulmonary hypertension.

Political Girl clearly has some great digital media chops. Her podcast page, website, and broadcasts themselves are all first-class. Her delivery is RAPID fire to say the very least, but well organized and articulate. 21st Century Restoration could use some of her media and web savvy — we are envious; she could perhaps use some of our historical depth.

Ms. McGowan has Thomas Paine mostly right. I recommend listening to what she has to say — again, links follow below. .

She is indeed correct that Paine has been credited by his own contemporaries and later historians with shifting public opinion from royalism and received tradition to the cause of independence. She is right again that there is a need to re-examine and remember the origins of what we call our liberties. And she has the outlines of Paine’s career about right.

But her enthusiastic treatment tends to run a bit off the rails from time to time. This is the pitfall of pop history. Paine “Urged them to trust their own feelings.” I don’t want to be too critical here, because Ms. McGowan is trying to make the point that Paine’s argued against the received wisdom of monarchy and inherited nobility. Absolutely. But Paine’s appeal was not to emotion; ever. Paine’s appeal was to reason and principle — the foundational ones he called “first principles.” This was the basis of rational common sense and … his pamphlet Common Sense.

Here is a clear expression of Paine’s idea of “first principles.”

”When precedents fail to spirit us, we must return to the first principles of things for information; and think, as if we were the first men that thought. And this is the true reason that, in the present state of affairs, the wise are become foolish, and the foolish wise.”
[An Open Letter signed by The Forester and written by Thomas Paine in the Pennsylania Journal, 8 May, 1776].

Notice that it’s not FEEL like we ONCE felt or never felt before. It’s “THINK, as if we were the first … that thought.”

Here is a clear expression of Paine’s “exceptionalism.”

”The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.”
Thomas Paine
Common Sense

American exceptionalism. Her repeated use of this term in the context of Paine’s writings underscores an influence that she cites in the podcast — Harvey J. Kaye, a good friend and colleague of the author of this blog and, as Ms. McGowen points out, the author of two fine works on Paine.

There is, however, a tension in the concept of American exceptionalism. The original idea was for the world to be INSPIRED by American independence to seek out their own. This did happen in great part. The South American liberator Simon Bolivar cited Paine as his inspiration. Napoleon Bonapart, while still a republican, said that he slept with a copy of Paine’s Rights of Man under his pillow every night. MOST countries in the west have adopted some form of republic and nearly every country in the world CALLS themselves a republic. This part of American exceptionalism was both successful — in varying degree — and consonant with Paine’s view.

The problem is that perhaps since the 1840s, this more idealistic and inspirational concept of American exceptionalism got wrapped up with Manifest Destiny and the idea that America had a duty and a right to SPREAD its version of “liberty and democracy” around the world. First came the 1846-1848 Mexican American War (discussed elsewhere in this blog here), a land-grabbing adventure wherein we beat up on Mexico and TOOK Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Wyoming as booty. Then came the 1898 Spanish American War - Teddy Roosevelt called it a “splendid little war” - in which the US acquired Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. The latter was “given” its independence when we had neither the budget nor inclination to hold it. Yellow fever decimated the US occupation forces in Cuba, but the US still holds a small piece of it. Today, the US has military bases ringing Russia, China, and Iran with estimates of overseas installations ranging from 600 to 850. It should be without saying that this was not what Paine had in mind. He was a firm believer in national self-determination.

The truth is that Paine foresaw what was to come. In a letter to a beloved friend, he wrote:

”A thousand years hence (for I must indulge in a few thoughts), perhaps in less, America maybe what England now is! The innocence of her character that won the hearts of all nations in her favor may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of that liberty which thousands bled for, or suffered to obtain, may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.

When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of nations of the ancient world, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids, and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship. But when the empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity,-here rose a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, ah painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom rose and fell!”
Thomas Paine to Kitty Nicholson Few - January 6, 1789.

He was right.

Finally, Ms. McGowan - Politics Girl - indicates in her podcast that it wasn’t until the newly minted 2022 Thomas Paine Memorial Association was launched that an effort was made to raise a statue of Paine in the nation’s capital. 100% incorrect

In the early 1990s, chiefly through the efforts of the late David Henley of Virginia - a good friend and colleague of the author of this blog — Senate Continuing Resolution 110 and House Resolution 1628 were co-written and submitted to the 102nd Congress by the late Sen. Steve Symms (R-ID) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY). Accompanied by over 100 letters of endorsement by historians and other distinguished persons and organizations, the legislation obtained 78 co-sponsors in the Senate and 230 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, and passed by unanimous consent of both houses. In October 1992, the legislation was signed into law (PL102-407 and PL102-459) by President George H. W. Bush authorizing the construction through private funds of a memorial to Thomas Paine in "Area 1" of the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. That memorial was never built and it is doubtful the new effort will will advance even that far.

In light of the 170+ years of expansionist, dishonorable, and bloody misconduct by the United States both at home and abroad since Paine’s death, it is my professional opinion that Thomas Paine would not likely be interested in having his statue in Washington, DC . It might be argued, of course, that a statue to the great man would somehow change the tone or conduct of the government and populace of the United States. That view would be, I think be in error. Andrew Jackson, for all his shortcomings, had the right take on Thomas Paine:

“Thomas Paine needs no monument made by hands; he has erected himself a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty. ‘The Rights of Man’ will be more enduring than all the piles of marble and granite man can erect.”

If students need to be more deeply informed on the life and works of Thomas Paine - and they most certainly do - then a wider distribution of his life and works and their greater inclusion in instructional curricula will accomplish more than by a statue that the great majority will never see. Stop worrying about statues and monuments of marble and stone. Commemorate and honor Paine through our actions for justice, , truth, and education. Reform this nation; THAT will be the monument that Paine would want. Thank you for reading. Here is the link to the Politics Girl podcast: