Thomas Paine: Revolutionary, Not Patriot

Did you know the man who wrote Common Sense, the pamphlet that inspired Americans to fight for independence, died alone with only six mourners at his funeral? In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Matthew Brogdon unpack the fascinating and tragic story of Thomas Paine, a man who helped spark the Revolution but couldn’t find a home in the nation he helped create.

They follow Paine’s incredible journey from a struggling English immigrant to one of the most gifted writers of his generation, standing shoulder to shoulder with Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton whose words gave the colonies a sense of identity and purpose. Common Sense and The American Crisis didn’t just rally troops; they shaped what it meant to be American. But the same bold, uncompromising spirit that made him a hero would also turn him into an outcast.

Savannah and Matthew trace how Paine’s time in France, his open attacks on George Washington, and his controversial book The Age of Reason, where he challenged organized religion, left him alienated and forgotten. Was he a patriot or just a perpetual revolutionary? This episode dives into that question and reminds us how someone can be absolutely right for their moment in history yet completely lost in their own time.

In This Episode

• (00:00) Introduction
• (00:17) Thomas Paine’s early life and arrival in America
• (01:02) Paine’s early career in America and Common Sense
• (01:24) Impact and success of Common Sense
• (01:59) Why Common Sense was so powerful
• (02:26) Paine’s attack on monarchy and hereditary rule
• (04:13) Biblical arguments against monarchy
• (05:15) Paine’s writing style and rhetorical skill
• (06:40) The case for American independence and identity
• (09:31) Immigrants and the American identity
• (10:31) Paine and the naming of the United States
• (11:28) Speculation on Paine and the Declaration of Independence
• (11:41) America’s duty and revolutionary purpose
• (12:17) Providence, history, and revolutionary ideals
• (13:07) American vs. French revolutionary ideals
• (14:38) Common Sense’s public reception and influence
• (15:38) Copyright, authors’ rights, and Paine’s finances
• (16:14) The American Crisis and its impact
• (18:36) Paine’s decline and involvement in the French Revolution
• (20:08) Paine’s imprisonment and rescue
• (24:17) Paine’s break with Washington and controversial writings
• (25:35) The Age of Reason and alienation from America
• (27:01) Paine’s radical ideas on property and universal income
• (29:10) Paine’s legacy: revolutionary vs. patriot
• (32:23) Lessons from Paine’s life and death

Notable Quotes

• (02:26) “Paine is an excellent writer. I mean, he's got a claim to being one of the most talented writers of the founding in a generation that boasted Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton.." — Matthew Brogdon
• (02:46) "I think he has a way of identifying the sort of core arguments, the core complaints. I mean, he's anticipating, in many ways, the argument of the declaration, because he's identifying the principal target as monarchy." — Matthew Brogdon
• (04:18) “He uses kind of a biblical argument against monarchy, which is very common in this day to do. But given the fact that he doesn't believe in the Bible, this is an interesting thing for him to do.”— Savannah Eccles Johnston 
• (06:18) "The great joke of monarchy is that it so often gives us an ass for a lion. You know, you start out with a lion and then you wind up with the kids or just not what they ought to be." — Matthew Brogdon
• (10:33) "Thomas Paine is, in some quarters, credited with creating the name United States of America." — Savannah Eccles Johnston 
• (20:02) "T

Transcript

Intro:

[00:00 - 00:10]

We the people do ordain and establish this Constitution.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[00:10 - 00:16]

Welcome to This Constitution. My name is Savannah Eccles Johnston.

Matthew Brogdon:

[00:16 - 00:17]

And I'm Matthew Brogdon.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[00:17 - 01:24]

And today we're going to talk about Thomas Paine and his most famous pamphlet, Common Sense. But we're going to talk about some of his other work too. So every American has  heard of Thomas Paine and the influence he had on the American Revolution. But before we get to Common Sense, I think we should start with some background on Thomas Paine, an immigrant to the United States, kind of later in life immigrant as an adult immigrant to the United States. So this man is born in England and he is a failure at most things in his life. Before he immigrates, he has a number of failed business enterprises. And his hope comes from meeting Benjamin Franklin in London. And Benjamin Franklin gives him a letter of introduction and sends him over to the colonies, where he winds up in Pennsylvania. He's so sick he nearly dies on the way over. It takes him six weeks to recover. And it's Benjamin Franklin's perfect personal doctor who like, has him carried off the boat and nurses him back to health and helps him get a job at, what is it, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Like the first actual American newspaper with all American content. And he takes it in a wildly political direction. This is kind of the steps leading up to the publication of his big one, his 47 page pamphlet called Common Sense.

Matthew Brogdon:

[01:24 -01:26]

So when is this, when does he land in America?

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[01:26 - 02:26] 

Early 1770s. He's only here for a very short amount of time before he publishes Common Sense. So he takes over as the chief editor for the Pennsylvania Gazette. I think this is the name of it. And immediately takes it in a political direction and it becomes kind of the first viral pamphlet, if you will. Like this is the world's first viral tweet, basically 47 page tweet. It's 120,000 copies sold in three months, which is amazing. 120,000 copies in a country of 2.5 million people. That's what we're talking about here. And he will later claim that it sold half a million copies. Not in its first few months, but eventually throughout the revolution, sold half a million copies. So the question we have to ask is why was Thomas Paine's Common Sense so ridiculously successful? Historians have said that without Common Sense, you don't have the American Revolution or it takes much longer to get to the American Revolution. So what is so powerful about it? First in its style? What's so powerful about the style of his writing?

Matthew Brogdon:

[02:26 - 03:53]

Well, Payne is an excellent writer. I mean, he's got a claim to being one of the most talented writers of the Founding in a generation that boasted Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton. So this is an incredible talent that he has to begin with. But I think one thing that he does is I think he has a way of identifying the sort of core arguments, the core complaints. I mean, he's anticipating in many ways the argument of the Declaration, because he's identifying the principal target as monarchy. That's not obvious in 1776. Actually, it is not obvious that attacking monarchy is the path to American independence, because Americans had been making the constitutional argument under the British Constitution that the monarch was the legitimate authority in North America and that it was Parliament that was intruding, and that Parliament had no right to regulate the internal affairs of America, and instead that it should be the Crown overseeing colonial representative legislatures. So when Paine puts out this pamphlet and says, no, actually, the monarchy is just bad root and branch, it really is a revolutionary claim. It was not obvious we were going to just cast off the British monarchy. After all, our fellow former British colonies didn't do so. They remained in the British Commonwealth with the monarchy at their head. So I think that's one he succeeds in doing that.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[03:53 - 04:12]

Well, let's dig into that one a little bit more, because you're right, this is one of the key revolutionary things he's going to say. He's not going to just attack monarchy, he's going to attack hereditary monarchy as a particularly stupid idea. And you could really summarize his argument as, even if the father is really great, there's no guarantee the son isn't an idiot. Right?

Matthew Brogdon:

[04:12 - 04:13]

Yeah, there's some pithy lines in there.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[04:13 - 04:29]

Right. So it's hereditary monarchy, this problem. And what's interesting about this language is he uses kind of a biblical argument against monarchy, which is very common in this day to do. But given the fact that he doesn't believe in the Bible, this is an interesting thing for him to do.

Matthew Brogdon:

[04:29 - 04:54] 

Well, I do think Paine is adept at this, too. He's adept at making arguments he knows the public will be sympathetic to, even if he himself is not. Many of us struggle with that. Many of us struggle to articulate ideas that we have trouble with but that other people might find appealing. And Paine does not have trouble channeling the demos, the public mind, the zeitgeist, even when he has trouble with it.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[04:54 - 05:12]

One thing he talks about is he says, look, the Old Testament kings, when they finally got kings, which was a mistake. Just led the people astray. They led them into idol worship and all of the things. So clearly monarchy is not God's way. And this is really important because he's saying God does not ordain kings. There's no divine right of kings.

Matthew Brogdon:

[05:12 - 05:15] 

Yeah, it was the second best sort of alternative in the Old Testament.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[05:15 - 05:39] 

Yeah. So this is big. And this also goes back to why he's so convincing, is he's making arguments that people will understand. Very religiously toned arguments. But he's doing it in a writing style that's very open. He's not writing like a college professor, thank goodness. He's writing even a more familiar way than like Washington Post op eds. That's why I compare it to like a tweet. It's like a long 15 post tweet or something. It's very common language.

Matthew Brogdon:

[05:39 - 06:00] 

America's greatest rhetoricians have been able to do this. People often think that eloquence is about saying very sophisticated things or things that sound very complex, that you kind of have to pick apart. You have to diagram the sentence to find out what it means. And the truth is, our most eloquent statesmen have been people who are capable of taking sophisticated ideas and expressing them very simply.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[06:00 - 06:01]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon:

[06:01 - 06:29]

I mean, Twain did this. Lincoln, Frederick Douglass. Washington was more or less adept at this. I mean, he was capable of writing public letters that were very accessible to people. And Paine is unexcelled in his ability to do this. His line about monarchy is actually that the great joke of monarchy is that it so often gives us an ass for a lion. You know, you start out with a lion and then you wind up with the kids or just not what they ought to be.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[06:29 - 06:29]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon:

[06:29 - 06:40]

So yeah, no, he's got a real talent for speaking the people's language, but in a very eloquent fashion. And we'll see that. We'll talk about the American crisis in a little bit, which furnishes some of the most famous lines in American literature.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[06:40 - 07:39]

Right. Okay. So first, hereditary monarchy is a stupid idea. And then second, he is going to assail the idea that we should even be trying to fix the relationship with Great Britain. And you can kind of compare this to like it's a bad relationship. They might say they're sorry, but if you go back to it, they'll keep behaving the way they always have. You got to break up kind of a thing is that's kind of the language he's using here is there's no point in continuing the relationship. So it's time to break up. And you can break up because as it turns out, there is such a thing as an American people. This, I think, is one of his most important contributions, is he's saying, look, guys, I just moved here, so I'm not a native Pennsylvanian. I don't view myself as a Virginian or a Massachusetts, whatever that is. I view myself as an American. He takes his oath to the state of Pennsylvania almost immediately upon arrival, saying, I can see that you share a lot more than you think you do. And in fact, you are a distinct people, as opposed to the British. You are not British anymore. You're American. No one had really said that yet. In the same way.

Matthew Brogdon:

[07:39 - 07:48] 

Yeah. And that's going to be an important role that certain statesmen play in the founding of encouraging Americans to see themselves as Americans.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[07:48 - 07:48]

Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon:

[07:48 - 08:07]

Paine does it as an immigrant through getting people to see an American nation. Alexander Hamilton famously, is going to do it later. Right. Another sort of immigrant child of America. In fact, I've always loved. Richard Brookheiser's biography of Alexander Hamilton is subtitled American. It's Alexander Hamilton American.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[08:07 - 08:08]

Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon:

[08:08 - 08:20]

And there's sort of an exclamation point on that. And Paine fits that mold, too. Tom Paine, American and there are certain statesmen that break through sort of provincial outlook.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[08:20 -08:57]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon:

[08:20 - 08:57]

That a lot of American statesmen had. They had loyalty to their states. We've talked in previous episodes about how deeply rooted self government is at the local level. And America would not be the country that it is if self government weren't rooted at the local level and rooted in a union of states. So that's very important. But Madison's later going to say that there's a centripetal or centrifugal. Which one is it? One or the other force that pushes unions apart, makes them want to fly apart like pieces on it They're all tied to a string and you're spinning them around and they just want to fly apart.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[08:57 -08:58]

Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon:

[08:58- 09:39]

And so you need something at the center that holds them together. And Madison's going to say, that's the big objective of the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution is to create that cohesion at the center to hold this union that might come apart together. And people like Paine at key points in the American founding are just critical to come along and say, there is such a thing as America and there is such a thing as an American people. And it's worth defending and fighting for and acting as one people.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[09:31 - 09:53]

Right. And you can be functionally independent, because there is such things in American people. You make a point about Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Paine both being immigrants and being able to see the America, the American people, as kind of one big unit. That's something immigrants have consistently done across our history, is been able to kind of pull us out of provincial thinking and say, no, this is what America is. I can tell you because I'm coming in and can see kind of the bird's eye view of it.

Matthew Brogdon:

[09:53 - 10:15]

You see that even now, in the midst of sort of coming out of the end of the 20th century, with the fall of communism, we've lost some of the contrast between a society grounded in freedom and a society grounded in authoritarianism and collectivism. And in many cases, it's immigrant voices. People who grew up in tyranny who can look at America and say, no, don't lose your way, sort of hold the compass and say no. The compass still points toward freedom.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[10:19 -10:20]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[10:20 - 10:29]

And that's a very important role that people play. It gives you a certain perspective. One we didn't mention was James Wilson. I don't want to leave him out. Poor James Wilson, Scottish immigrant.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[10:29 -10:30]

He's always left out.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[10:30 -10:31]

He does this, too. Yeah.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[10:31 -10:49]

Oh, by the way, one last note on this. Thomas Paine is in some quarters credited with creating the name United States of America. He capitalizes it. How's that common sense? Oh, instead of like a lowercase United States, it's uppercase United States of America, as in one unit.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[10:49 - 10:53]

Because that was in the spring of 1776.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[10:53 - 10:55]

Yeah. It's published in January 1776.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[10:55 - 11:06]

Be curious. We talked about all this other stuff. I'm curious what the. Some of the things from the First Continental Congress and Second Continental Congress in 1775 say. I know they speak of these united colonies.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[11:06 - 11:08]

Yeah. I think it's lowercase is the key.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[11:08 - 11:08]

Oh, I see.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[11:08 -11:09]

The uppercase.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[11:09 - 11:14]

Is it the uppercase and makes it a title United States of America.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[11:14 -11:14]

Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[11:14 -11:28]

As opposed to them just being united being an adjective, states being the sort of noun, and then America modifying it, making it one title. The United States of America. Not these United States of America.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[11:28- 11:35]

Okay. Later, we should also mention that some people wonder if he helped write the Declaration of Independence as well. There's some talk about that.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[11:35 - 11:40]

I feel that's a little like the Shakespeare writing, the Bible thing, you know?

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [11:40 - 11:40]

I don't know.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[11:40 -11:41]

It's a little much for me.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[11:41- 12:17]

I know it does seem a little ridiculous, but. All right, so then Great Britain is a bad relationship. We need to end the relationship. And Work on ourselves for a while. And we can, because there is such a thing as America. And in fact we have to, because we have some kind of duty from history or for God or from something to be this free nation is what Thomas Paine is trying to say. So America has like a duty to the world to become free and independent. So it's not only you can, but you have to. It's necessary. America's the one that's going to step forward in this moment and do it. That's the crux of his argument. Predatory monarchy. Stupid. Oh, sorry.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[12:17 - 12:26]

Is that always sort of part of memorable revolutions? This sort of providential character, this. We're convinced we're doing God's work.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:26 -12:28]

Either God's work or history's work.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[12:28 -12:38]

Right. That's right. It's either providence or history, one or the other. And there's a certain providential character that revolutions tend to take on.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:38 -12:40]

Yeah. No, I think that's true. And he's tapping right into that.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[12:40 -12:57]

Yeah. This reminds me of. Is it Walter Russell Mead has a whole book on American foreign policy that talks about how this carries forward. It's hard to understand American foreign policy and the way we argue about America's place in the world without understanding the way that Americans think about America's purpose.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:57 -12:58]

Yes.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[12:58 -12:59]

Its duties is another way to put that.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:59 -13:07]

And that can be both in an isolationist sense, protect yourself as a city on a hill, or in a very liberal, involved in the world sense.

Matthew Brogdon:

 [13:07 -14:31]

And it's important to note we've maintained that tension between the notion that we sort of have a providential calling to promote something in the world. We like to call it democracy now. Right. We used to call it liberty or freedom, as Jefferson put it, an empire of liberty stretching across the continent. Right. But we've held the tension between that and a kind of healthy introspection that says, you know what a kind of puritanism that says we're a people apart and we don't feel the need to reform the nations of the earth. And the thing that the French Revolution is going to do is to lose that tension. The revolutionary foreign policy of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man with its appeal to fraternity. We appealed to natural rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The French appealed to fraternity, brotherhood, brotherhood, the brotherhood of all men. And for them, that meant a duty to carry the revolution forward beyond France, which is what embroils them in war with the UK. It embroils them in war with Austria, ultimately translates into Napoleonic imperial ambitions. So Robespierre's revolutionary foreign policy is kind of like takes all the restraints that Americans have that sort of restrain us from trying to carry the good news to the whole world. Right, yeah. Extend the gospel of the Declaration, so to speak, to every tribe and people.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[14:31 -14:31]

Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[14:31 - 14:38]

The French are going to say no, no, no. Yeah. It's got to go everywhere. Everywhere the sun rises, there will be French democracy.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[14:38 -14:58]

We're going to get back to the French in just a little bit. You know how much I like to talk about why America is better than France. But we'll get to that in just a second. So first, this is his big argument. It is now published. And it's not just published. It's read out loud in town squares, this little pamphlet. And I feel like that would take a very long time to read. 47 pages. But this is what's happening. It's being read out loud to people.

Matthew Brogdon:

 [14:58 - 14:59]

I mean, what else are you going to do?

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [14:59 - 15:01]

Yeah, good point.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:01 - 15:01]

Laundry.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[15:01 - 15:04]

Yeah, good point. This is a boring time.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:04 - 15:09]

It's boring. People do spend long periods of time in conversation.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [15:09 - 15:14]

Some estimates say that up to 20% of American households had one of these by the end of the Revolutionary War.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:14 - 15:19]

So what would be the equivalent now? 120,000 copies.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[15:19 - 15:22]

It's 60 million is what they say is the equivalent. That's like Harry Potter.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:22 -15:27]

That would be 60 million copies in American homes. But even Harry Potter, that's like copies globally.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[15:27 -15:35]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So 60 million worldwide. There's only a few books that have ever sold that much worldwide. Harry Potter's got to be up there, right?

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:35 -15:35]

Sure.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[15:35 - 15:37]

We'll just say it's the revolutionary Harry Potter.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:37 - 15:38]

Yes. If you put them all together.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [15:38 - 15:44]

Right. Okay. So though he does not make as much money as she does from it, so this does not make him a billionaire.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:44 -15:48]

Authors got a really raw deal back in the day before the 20th century.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[15:48 - 15:49]

They did.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:49 -15:57]

We improved this. People don't appreciate this. Our whole copyright and trademark law, which the Constitution commands Congress to create.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[15:57-15:59]

Way to bring it back to the Constitution has.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[15:59 -16:07]

Did revolutionize the sense in which artists and authors and inventors get the benefit of the things they make right. And that was not altogether true.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[16:07-16:09]

So Thomas Paine did not have this benefit.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[16:09-16:09]

No, he did not.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[16:09 -16:12]

He is struggling for money his entire life.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[16:12 -16:14]

Too bad he didn't have modern American copyright law.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[16:14 -16:33]

Right. Yeah. Well, this is pre Constitution that he's doing this. So after you get common sense, he doesn't stop.  He keeps writing pamphlets. And you mentioned earlier, the American Crisis is his next most important pamphlet. And this one comes really early as well. 1777, is that right?

Matthew Brogdon: 

[16:33 -17:03]

Yeah, I mean, that's right. In the midst the American crisis is important because the American cause of independence rests on military victory, and military victory is not assured. Washington, while he wins in Boston in The spring of 1776, not long after Common Sense is published. I mean, you kind of have the succession. You got Tom Paine publishing Common Sense. The British flee Boston. They withdraw on St. Patrick's Day, actually in March of 1776. And then it's a whole string of defeats.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[17:03-17:04]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[17:04 -17:32]

With just a couple of, like, spots of hope. Princeton and Trenton in the winter, like, in December and January in 1776 and 77. So the American Continental army is having a rough time. George Washington is in the doldrums. I mean, this is the low point of his experience, both as a statesman and a military commander. So Paine is quite worried that the American people will lose faith, I think, in their ability to win independence.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[17:32-17:32]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[17:32 -17:41]

And so in that moment, imagine these lines. You open this new pamphlet from Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense. In fact, this is.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[17:41-17:44]

I'm looking at a lines that Washington will have read to his troops.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[17:44 -17:44]

Yes.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [17:44 -17:45]

So let's put that as the.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[17:45-17:56]

Yeah. And the first page of the pamphlet says, the American Crisis Number One. It's going to be a series of essays by the author of Common Sense. Right. So this is bestseller.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[17:56 -17:56]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[17:56-18:35]

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from service to his country. But he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. And that's the opening lines. I mean, if I could write this way, it would be amazing. But, yes, Washington, as this read to his troops, Paine takes it on himself to try to galvanize American confidence in the face of what were a string of defeats for the Continental Army.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[18:35-19:18]

Right. Okay. So within 30 years of this, Paine is going to go from revolutionary hero, not only the man who may have sparked the revolution, but kept it alive at its lowest moment through the power of his words, to dying in obscurity in 1809 with six people at his funeral. What happens over the next 30 years? I mean, his rise has been meteoric in American politics. He hasn't even been in the States five years at this point. Yeah, and he's really hit the apex of American political life as a writer. How does it go so spectacularly wrong after this? So we were talking before this that a part of it is just his very poor judgment that he's really good at that one thing. And that one thing almost gets him killed a couple of times.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[19:18-19:18]

Yeah.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[19:18 -19:40]

So he is going to go eventually to France because revolution. He's going to go and help with the French Revolution. And he's awarded honorary French citizenship along with George Washington and a bunch of others. And although he doesn't speak French, this is actually very American. This makes him very American. Although he doesn't speak French and doesn't really bother to learn. He gets elected to their national convention.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[19:40-19:40]

That's right.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[19:40 -19:41]

Which is their legislature.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[19:41-19:43]

Yeah. He has a constituency.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[19:43-19:44]

Yes, he does.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[19:44-19:47]

He supposedly represents in this assembly.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[19:47- 20:00]

Right. And immediately begins to make enemies. And he is eventually arrested and. And put in the prison of Luxembourg where he's scheduled for execution because they're just chopping everybody's head off at this point. And he's.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[20:00 - 20:02]

It's expensive to keep people in prison.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[20:02 - 20:02]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[20:02 - 20:08]

Turns out a revolution functions much more efficiently if you just execute the people who have become inconvenient.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[20:08 -20:48]

Just chop their heads off. So he's spared from this, by the way, this is such a good story. He's spared from this because the prison guard has the door open to his cell and you're supposed to mark with a white chalk mark. If they're supposed to be executed that day. This is how normal it is. And they put it on the inside of the door and so the person doesn't see it, so he's spared execution. And by the way, why are they trying to execute an American citizen? Wouldn't the American ambassador get really mad about that? Governor Morris, the American ambassador at this point to France? No. Morris is like, oh, we don't claim him. He's an English citizen and you're at war with England. So go ahead and chop his head off because he and Governor Morris are in a real personal.So Gouverneur Morris just totally leaves him out to dry.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[20:48 -22:05]

Well, yes. So I'm sure the defense of Gouverneur Morris on this is that Morris is the American agent in Paris through the terrors, Capital T. Terrors. We refer to this. It's so bloody. Morris manages to keep his head and remain alive in Paris and effective as a diplomat throughout this entire travesty while heads are rolling right and left. So Morris is a very, very adept politician. He understands French politics very well. He's completely loyal to Washington. And Morris is actually expending a lot of energy on political capital, keeping other people alive. I mean, for example, Morris is responsible for smuggling out the Crown Prince, the Dauphin, in the middle of the terrors. Wow. It's the reason the entire royal family doesn't wind up dead, as well as a number of other folks protecting British shipping. I mean, in many cases, the French have apprehended American vessels. He's actually got a lot of people he's trying to protect. And there is a real question for him. Do I expend risk the political capital not only of himself, but of Washington? He's understood to be Washington's agent helping out Tom Paine. And in theory, sure. But Paine had done a very imprudent thing. Paine had published a highly critical essay.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[22:05- 22:13]

But this is after. Was it after he publishes a highly critical essay of Washington? After he has a personal beef with Governor Morris at this point? Okay, he hasn't attacked Washington yet.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[22:13 - 22:15]

Two of them are hammer and tongs already before the Washington.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[22:15 - 22:16]

Yes.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[22:16 - 23:04]

Okay, well, we'll talk about the Washington thing in a minute. But Paine is very isolated. Also, you know, the fact that he doesn't speak French. He finds himself in the. In the French Assembly. And part of the problem is most revolutions, it quickly devolves into party politics, party factions, and he doesn't understand. He winds up allying himself sort of accidentally with a party faction, I think, and the others see him as the enemy. And this is the danger whenever you wander into a political situation, however well intentioned you might be, right. Think, I'm just a good guy. I'm here to support the revolution, Right? Well, no, you're expected to take sides in this bloody struggle, choose wisely. French are engaged in. And he does not. Now, admittedly, lots of people who are French and in charge of things and savvy still wind up dead anyway, right? I mean, even Robespierre winds up.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[23:04 -24:15]

Yeah. A couple of things here about Payne's demise. There are a couple of reasons, and one is interpersonal conflict. And two is some really unusual for his day ideas that he propagates. And these two often go together. How does he wander into the French National Convention and just completely blow it? Well, one answer is he really has this pure idea of revolution. He doesn't understand, I think in some significant sense, politics and what you said, party politics, what he's walking into. And he certainly doesn't understand the language that compounds the problem. So he really believes that republics are peaceful, that revolution is kind of the natural state and positive. And he doesn't understand it for what it will be. And you see this in his other pamphlet, the Rights of Man, which he writes is a pushback against Edmund Burke's criticism of the French Revolution. So Gouverneur Morris does not help him out. Thomas Paine is languishing in prison and there's a change in personnel. James Monroe becomes the new minister to France. Thomas Paine sends him a letter, says, will you please do what Governor Morris refused to do and recognize my citizenship? I am not an English citizen. I am an American citizen. Therefore I'm a citizen of an allied country to France. Please help me out. And James Monroe does. He's released from prison because they finally.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[24:15 - 24:17]

Recognize his American citizenship.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[24:17 -25:35]

Exactly. He's released from prison and he doesn't return to the United States immediately. Instead, he makes one of the greatest mistakes of his political life. He's really learned nothing about politics here. He's going to write a letter to Washington. And this letter to Washington is full of a sense of betrayal. Basically, he feels that Washington left him out to dry after. In some sense. Paine really thinks he saved the Revolution. Washington abandoned me in prison. So he's going to send this really angry letter. Washington's not going to respond very wisely. Then Paine is going to publish it as an open letter. This criticism of Washington. And essentially this open letter is Washington, You're a hypocrite. You're unfeeling. You lack the true revolutionary spirit. You weren't even a very good general. You get all the credit for it. You shouldn't have. You were a not great general. You're a bad character. All of the things. This is a dumb thing to do. Washington is beloved. Why attack his character personally? But this is what he does. But wait, there's more. He's going to keep writing some really interesting ideas. He is an early critic of slavery. Great. He identifies as an abolitionist. He's also going to critique Christianity, basically say that it's a false religion and he's a deist and all of these kind of things.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[25:35 -25:37]

Yeah. He writes this pamphlet, the Age of Reason.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[25:37 -25:37]

Yeah.

Matthew Brogdon: [

25:37 -26:30]

Which is, you know, he's been steeping in French Revolutionary politics. He's disaffected from his time in America. I shouldn't say his American roots. He was only here for a few years. And he gives expression to this French impulse that the Age of Reason means discarding all sort of inherited forms of authority. We talked about this whenever we talked about the folk origins of the Revolution. Right. We talked a little bit about the fact that America sort of hangs on to piety to a very religious character. The French sort of revolt against everything. It's not just monarchy and hereditary aristocracy and the old forms of government, but even the traditional religion in all its forms sort of rejected and replaced by very what they think is rationalistic. They set reason over against revelation and religion.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[26:30 -26:30]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[26:30 - 26:56]

Which many of us would think might be a false dichotomy. But Paine takes it on himself to be the sort of herald of this new age of reason, giving voice to this kind of French revolutionary conviction about religion, which is not going to endear him to Americans either. I mean this is just further alienated. So you've attacked George Washington, you've attacked Christianity. I mean, Americans are in the business of figuring out whether they're opposed to slavery or not. So that's maybe the scales are even there.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[26:56 - 27:26]

But he's also going to cause potentially some problems for property owners. He's has this idea of one time tax, inheritance tax from big property owners to fund a universal basic income. So he's in some ways a lot of his ideas are way ahead of his time and this isn't going to endear him either. So he will stay away for a couple of years until at the personal invitation and cost of Thomas Jefferson, he will return to the United States in the early 1800s.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[27:26 -27:28]

So private property and religion.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[27:28 - 27:31]

Private property, religion and George Washington.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[27:31 -28:47]

Oh my goodness. And this is prefiguring in many ways the battles America will fight subsequently. Does the revolutionary spirit, the Declaration's claim of equality, does it mean discarding all forms of authority, including the authority of parents over their children, the authority of churches over their congregants, the authority of religion over the mind and of course the sanctity of private property. This is what sometimes with the capital L, the leveling spirit, a sort of radical equality means eliminating differences between human beings. And that can't actually just be. Sometimes we think about that in terms of property, but those differences, I mean if you read Marx on, for example, Marx on the Jewish question, Jews can't be tolerated in the communist regime because they set themselves apart. And you can't hold yourself apart and be equals. So any kind of separateness, any kind of distinctiveness, any claim to excellence, any claim to superiority, even if it's grounded in merit, wealth, productivity, virtue is intolerable to that sort of leveling spirit. And pain doesn't anticipate all of the radical implications of this. But he certainly is sort of, he's sensing the direction of many of these things. He's going to plague French politics in the 19th century too. But.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[28:47 -29:01]

Right. So it doesn't pay in paying sense to be well ahead of his time. And in some way, this is interesting. He also, by the end of his life, is kind of not fundamentally American anymore. He may have sparked. Helped to spark the American Revolution, helped keep it alive.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[29:01 - 29:02]

Yeah.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[29:02 - 29:09]

But by the end, he's so outside of the American mainstream that he's more French at this point than he is American.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[29:09 - 29:31]

Noted. This is. His talent for giving voice to the zeitgeist, to the spirit of the age. Means that much of his writing in the American Revolution is. The writing is patriotic, but that's not born of an actual patriotism on Paine's part. He's a revolutionary, not a patriot. That is a distinction.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[29:31 - 29:32]

Yes.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[29:32 - 30:31]

He wants revolution. I don't know that. While he encourages Americans to see themselves as Americans, as nation, ultimately his revolutionary ideas sort of deny a national character, deny attachment to a particular place in a particular country. This is actually still the debate we have in things like civic education and more broadly, whenever we talk about politics and constitutionalism and the ideas of the Declaration of Independence is to what degree should we be talking about democratic citizenship? Right. The idea that our political allegiances are defined by a set of democratic ideals. We sort of praise them wherever we find them. And to what degree do our political loyalties or political ideas have to be attached to a particular place? Right. Do we understand ourselves as democratic citizens? Do we understand ourselves as American citizens? And that's a very real tension. It's a tension in scholarship. It's a tension in our politics, It's a tension in our foreign policy.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[30:31- 30:31]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[30:31 - 30:36]

And I think pain is definitely on the democratic citizenship side of that.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[30:36 - 30:36]

Yes.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[30:36 - 30:48]

That there's a universalistic democratic citizenship that people ought to embrace and that tends to overwhelm and destroy national differences in some sense.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [30:48 - 30:52]

And leaves him a man alone in a sad sense.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[30:52 - 30:53]

Citizen of the world.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[30:53 - 31:20]

A citizen of the world is a man dying alone. And so his funeral is attended just by six people. And two of those people are a wife of a friend and the son who he helped take care of. A Quaker. I don't. Maybe there's two Quakers and then two free black men who are deeply appreciative of his writing on abolition. And he's buried and kind of forgotten. And what a sat in. Maybe we should title this episode Thomas Paine Revolutionary, not Patriot or something like that.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[31:20 - 31:21]

Yeah.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

 [31:21 - 31:23]

And that is really. It explains everything about his life.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[31:23 - 31:25]

Revolutionary or patriot.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[31:25 - 31:26]

Revolutionary or patriot.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[31:26 - 31:27]

Everyone can put a question mark on it.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[31:27 - 31:38]

Yeah, but it kind of explains everything you need to know about Thomas Paine. How does he go from mega superstar of American Revolution to dying alone? And it's in exactly what you said. It's in the title. He is a revolutionary.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[31:38 - 32:23]

There is a certain warning in it of becoming disconnected from place and people. I mean, in some sense, the place we call home and the people that we love and invest in define us as human beings and sort of root and ground us. We ought to be looking beyond those circumstances and thinking in universalistic terms about what is right and wrong, what is freedom, what is liberty, what do these ideas require of us? What can we live up to? What can we learn from other people? But if you lose your attachment to particular people in a particular place, you are in danger of becoming unmoored, in a way, losing something human. I mean, there's something that human beings need from being attached to people and places.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[32:23 - 32:30]

Another important lesson we can learn from him is don't criticize George Washington. Dumb thing to do. So to wrap this up, Thomas Paine.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[32:30 - 32:33]

That's the other subtitle for the episode, Tom Paine.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[32:33 - 32:35]

Don't criticize Washington.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[32:35 - 32:36]

Don't criticize George Washington.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[32:36 - 32:57]

So to wrap this up, what do we take away from Thomas Paine? One deeply grateful for his remarkable rhetorical skills. His ability as a writer helps to spark the American Revolution and to keep it alive. And also, he was a man who showed a serious lack of judgment at times. He was a perpetual revolutionary who dies alone. And maybe teaches us some good life lessons along the way.

Matthew Brogdon: 

[32:57 - 32:58]

Absolutely.

Outro:

[00:32:58 - 33:03]

The Constitution is more than parchment under glass at the National Archives. It's a blueprint for American self government that shapes every part of our civic life, from the rights we cherish to the laws we live under. We explore the ongoing battle over the meaning and relevance of America's founding document. This Constitution will equip you to engage the most pressing political questions of our time. Join us every two weeks as we hash out constitutional questions together. This podcast is ordained and established by the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, the home of Utah's Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative.