Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“Thomas Paine did not sign any of the founding documents, either the Declaration or the Constitution. … He was not a member of the Continental Congress. He never held political office at any level. His only military experience was as an aide-de-camp for Major General Nathanael Greene. Thomas Paine was ‘a man who had failed as a skilled craftsman, as a teacher, as a shopkeeper, as a street preacher, as a petty customs official in the Excise, dismissed more than once and a sometime debtor and bankrupt.’ In short, a nobody. At his death in 1809 he was one of the most despised people in the country. Yet, without Thomas Paine, America might have become like Canada—a self-governing dominion under the Crown rather than an independent republic. Without Paine, we don’t get Common Sense and his clarion call for independence from England.” (07/06/26)