Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" -- Richard Brookhiser in the NY Times says that this book is really about both Thomas Paine and Burke's Reflection on the Revolution in France. That's the classic conversation between Whigs and Tories, between "two masters of polemic." One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/09/arts/idbriefs10A.php?WT.mc_id=rssarts

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Paine-Th.html

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780743256025&z=y

Gordon S. Wood writes reviews in The new York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/authors/53

Infamous Scribblers is an entertaining account of where we came from: http://www.declaration.net/news.asp?docID=5607&y=2007


A WRITER'S "concerns are with all mankind," wrote Thomas Paine in 1777, "and though he cannot command their obedience, he can assign them their duty." "Poor Paine [is] not the most prudent man in the world," wrote an American a few years later. These books support both judgments.

Tom Paine, by John Keane (Little, Brown, 644 pp., $27.95): John Keane's biography is hard going, thanks to its clumsy and cacophonous prose. To take one instance out of hundreds, Keane writes, of the style of Rights of Man, that "its author presented himself as a burping, farting rebel" -- and he means it as a compliment: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n9_v47/ai_16920443


http://www.umnexus.org/context.php?Article=107:
Thomas Paine, the great writer of inspiring (some said inflammatory) texts that sparked the Revolution, clearly felt that church and state should be separate, according to author Harvey J. Kaye in his book, “Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.” Kaye writes:

“Paine’s appreciation of America’s religious diversity and the need to divorce church from state, along with his skillful articulation of Bible story, American history and providential intent, also appealed to many of Virginia’s smallholders, the great majority of whom were Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists, who strongly resented the power and authority of the colony’s Anglican establishment” (page 55).

So from their earliest times Methodists and America share a reciprocal, informal influence – among other things, an independent spirit and an affinity for Trinitarian order (witness our common identity of legislative, executive and judicial branches in our respective governments).