Thomas Paine Our Contemporary Revolutionist by Chris Hedges

Click for Source Article from TruthDig on Revolution

ANATOMY OF REVOLUTION

Cornel West + Richard D. Wolff + Chris Hedges

Thomas Paine, author of “Common Sense” + “The Rights of Man” + “The Age of Reason” = Most widely read political essays of 18th century = Works that established moral and legal standards for rebellion. = Conditions for revolt = Paine’s call for the overthrow of British tyranny

Thomas Paine = America’s one great revolutionary theorist.

Paine essay “Common Sense” = Finest rhetorical writing + Clear and unsentimental understanding of British imperial power = Grasp of how power works

Sheldon Wolin’s book “Democracy Incorporated” = Concept of “inverted totalitarianism” as important today as Paine’s writings in 1776

Today people believe we can work through THIS SICK SYSTEM to reform corporate power. MULTINATIONALS TODAY are like BRITAIN of 1776

Paine explains to Americans British Monarch’s egocentric imperialistic military power and inability to listen to Others and make rational choices.

Paine explains what effective resistance to the British Monarch entails. = A new political language. “Common Sense” was read by hundreds of thousands. = First to call for a separation between civil society and the state. = Civil society must act as a counterweight against the state in a democracy. + Power in a democracy carries the seeds of tyranny. = TRUTHS!

Paine’s pen was a weapon deeply feared by the monarchies in Europe + Jacobins in France, who imprisoned Paine and planned to execute him for denouncing the Reign of Terror.

Paine’s object “…to rescue man from tyranny and false systems and false principles of government, and enable him to be free.” The role of a citizen extended beyond national borders = Fight any system of tyranny.

PAINE’S DEFINITION OF FREEDOM:

‘My poor are happy
Neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them
My jails are empty of prisoners
My streets are empty of beggars
The aged are not in want
Taxes are not oppressive
The rational world is my friend
Happiness is the rule

“…when these things can be said then may that country boast of its constitution and its government.” — Paine

Key to social change = Change in the nature of language itself = New words + Old words taking on new meanings = Call for revolution by Paine = New language of secular rationalism = Paine wrote in everyday language of working people.

Paine saw liberty as being intimately connected with language.

FACT = Those monopolizing power speak in language NOT understood by the masses.

Today we too will have to invent a new language (NOT CAPITALISM) in OUR age of diminishing resources. = Paine’s secular language of revolution expressed a strikingly new vocabulary. = Slogans and rallying cries = “age of revolution” + “times that try men’s souls.” + first writers to use “republic” in a positive way + He used “democracy,” as a state where each citizen participated directly in government. + “revolution” transformed from the motion of planets to signify vast and irreversible social and political change.

Paine understood despotic regimes = Corporate state = Destroy the soul = make war on reason and rational thought + Prevent free speech and free assembly. + Marginalize and silence critics. + Make all institutions RULED by corporate power. + Employ endless propaganda to rob people of their daily reality = Politically alienated. + Finally lose the ability to communicate their most basic concerns and grievances = Suppression

Paine = “Let men communicate their thoughts with freedom” OR “keep them under restraint, it is subterranean fire, whose agitation is unseen till it bursts into earthquake or volcano.”

Paine = Understood that war = Preferred activity of Corporate State = “the art of conquering at home.”

Paine = Refused to profit off his writings = Suffered for his courage + was persecuted in France and in America upon his final return. + Government spies tailed him constantly on London’s streets + The press that functioned as government mouthpieces pelted him with abuse. + Dozens of sermons and satires directed at Paine were published – written anonymously by upper-class foes masquerading as commoners.

Power of Paine = Embraced the American and French Revolutions + Fierce abolitionist + Foe of the use of terror + Denounce the calls to execute king Louis XVI.

Paine warned Unchecked legislatures could be as despotic as unchecked monarchs. + He hated pomp and arrogance of power and privilege + Loyal to the working class + He ridiculed the divine right of kings or Elitists. + He detested the superstition and power of religious dogma – churches are “human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit” + “virtuous people” would smash the windows of the Christian Church

Paine was unrelenting committed to truth and justice + Eternal rebelliousness + Equal society for all

The popular press in America dismissed Paine as “the drunken infidel.”

Paine = Never veered from the proposition that liberty meant the liberty to speak the truth even if no one wanted to hear it.

Paine died, largely forgotten, a pauper in NYC. Six people went to his funeral. Two of them were black.