MY COMMON SENSE HERO, THOMAS PAINE

Busy scribbling today, so I am cutting and pasting the following from The Writer’s Almanac (great source of literary tidbits and a daily poetry fix):

“It was on this day in 1776 that a 77-page pamphlet called “Common Sense” was published anonymously, making the case that the American colonies should declare independence from Great Britain. It had been written by a man named Thomas Paine. The pamphlet sold more than 500,000 copies, more copies than any other publication had ever sold at that time in America.

Adams would always be somewhat jealous of the attention “Common Sense” received, but even he had to admit that it was “Common Sense,” more than anything else, that had persuaded most ordinary Americans to support independence. Adams said, “Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense,’ the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.””

Thomas Paine was not afraid to disturb the universe.

https://madwomanintheforest.com/2007/01/10/my-common-sense-hero-thomas-paine/

https://www.ushistory.org/Paine/index.htm

BRING THE PAINE!!!

>>2381397

Notice how the sign says…Arguing for a REPUBLICAN form of government under a written constitution

>>2381491

will have to dig more into it but i'd venture to guess toward Catholics

>>2381547

Belief in Self

Though Paine was a self-proclaimed monotheist (believing in one God), he disdained virtually all organized religion, proclaiming that his only church was his own mind.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. [The Age of Reason]

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. [The Age of Reason]

Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication– after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

my Granny always said, “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”

https://www.thoughtco.com/top-thomas-paine-quotes-on-religion-4072775