Michael: Okay, Kevin. Five-word review for Thomas Paine. Kevin: Started a country, died alone. Michael: Ouch. That is brutally accurate. Mine is: "World's most successful marketing pamphlet." Kevin: I think both work, which is what makes him so fascinating. That pamphlet, and the man behind it, is our focus today. Michael: It is. We are diving deep into Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine. This is a collection of works from a man who, more than almost anyone, provided the intellectual fuel for the American Revolution. Kevin: The guy who basically wrote the mission statement for breaking up with the world's biggest superpower. Michael: Exactly. And what’s wild is that he was a complete unknown before this. A failed corset-maker from England who had a string of failed businesses and two failed marriages. He'd only been in America for about a year. Kevin: Wait, a failed corset-maker? How does a guy who can't successfully make undergarments convince a continent to go to war? Michael: That's the magic of it. He arrives in Philadelphia in 1774 with little more than a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, and by January 1776, he publishes Common Sense and becomes arguably the most influential voice on the continent. It’s one of history’s most incredible glow-ups.

Kevin: That’s an unbelievable trajectory. So how did this pamphlet, this one piece of writing, have such an explosive impact? Were people just waiting for someone to say the right thing? Michael: In a way, yes, but they didn't know it. You have to understand the mindset in 1775. Most colonists, even after the battles of Lexington and Concord, didn't want independence. They saw themselves as aggrieved British citizens. They wanted their rights respected; they wanted lower taxes. They were sending petitions to the King, hoping for reconciliation. Kevin: So they were basically in a bad relationship, hoping their partner would change, not looking to break up. Michael: A perfect analogy. And then Paine comes along and essentially writes the world's most persuasive breakup letter. His genius was in completely reframing the entire debate. He doesn't start with taxes or representation. He starts with a huge, philosophical idea. He writes, "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness." Kevin: Hold on. That’s the opening shot? He's calling government inherently evil from the very first page? That’s a bold move. Michael: It's a foundational one. He argues that society—people coming together to help each other—is natural and good. Government, on the other hand, is an artificial construct, a "necessary evil" at best, designed only to keep our worst impulses in check. It’s a restraint, not a source of blessing. Kevin: Okay, so he establishes that government is already on thin ice. Where does he go from there? Michael: He goes straight for the king. He says if government is a necessary evil, then monarchy is an absurd form of it. He attacks the very idea of hereditary rule. He asks, why should one family have a divine right to rule over everyone else forever? He points out the absurdity of it with this great line: nature disapproves of it, "otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion." Kevin: He’s basically saying the lottery of genetics produces more fools than leaders. That must have been shocking to read when the king was seen as divinely appointed. Michael: It was earth-shattering. And he was clever. For a deeply religious audience, he didn't just use logic; he used the Bible against the monarchy. He brings up the stories of Gideon and Samuel, where the ancient Israelites ask for a king, and God essentially warns them that it’s a terrible idea that will lead to tyranny. He’s using their own sacred text to prove that God is a republican. Kevin: That is brilliant. He’s not just an outsider yelling; he’s using their own rulebook to dismantle their beliefs from the inside. Michael: Precisely. And after he’s dismantled the logic of monarchy, he goes for the practical. He says it’s absurd for a small island to rule a vast continent. He argues that America’s parent country isn’t England, but Europe, since people fled from all over Europe to find freedom here. He makes the case that any economic benefit from Britain is a myth and that being tied to them just drags America into pointless European wars. Kevin: He’s systematically knocking down every single pillar holding up the argument for reconciliation. Michael: Every single one. And he does it in plain, fiery language. It’s not academic or full of legal jargon. It’s written to be read aloud in a tavern. It’s passionate, direct, and full of unforgettable lines like, "The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth." Kevin: So it’s accessible. It’s for everyone, not just the wealthy elites in powdered wigs. Michael: And that’s why it exploded. It sold over 120,000 copies in the first three months. To put that in perspective, with the colonial population at the time, that’s the modern equivalent of selling tens of millions of copies. It went viral before 'viral' was a thing. George Washington had it read to his troops. It completely changed the conversation. Within six months, the Declaration of Independence was signed. Kevin: Wow. So it really was the spark. No wonder John Adams, who was often a critic of Paine, later admitted that history would have to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine. Michael: He provided the argument, the passion, and the permission for people to think a thought that was, until then, almost unthinkable.

Kevin: Okay, so he's the hero of the hour. He’s the intellectual father of the United States. He even coined the name "the United States of America" in his later Crisis papers. How on earth does this man end up dying alone, broke, and hated? Michael: Because he didn't stop. The same intellectual engine that he used to dismantle the authority of the British Crown, he later turned on other powerful institutions. And it turns out, people are very selective about which authorities they're comfortable questioning. Kevin: What do you mean? What was his next target? Michael: After the American Revolution, he went to Europe and got deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote Rights of Man as a blistering defense of revolution and a takedown of monarchy everywhere. He was so radical he was charged with seditious libel in England and had to flee to France, where he was welcomed as a hero and given a seat in the National Convention. Kevin: So far, so good. He’s still the champion of liberty. Michael: For a moment. But then the French Revolution gets more extreme, enters the Reign of Terror. Paine, who opposed the execution of King Louis XVI, falls out of favor with the radical Jacobins. He’s arrested and thrown into a Luxembourg prison, expecting to be executed any day. Kevin: That’s a dramatic turn. And it’s in prison that he writes his most controversial work? Michael: Yes. Believing he’s about to die, he rushes to write The Age of Reason. And this is the book that seals his fate. In it, he takes the exact same tool—rational, common-sense inquiry—and applies it to organized religion. Kevin: Uh oh. I can see where this is going. What did he argue? Michael: He wasn't an atheist, which is the great misconception. He was a Deist. He believed firmly in God, a creator God. But he believed the only true word of God was the natural world itself—the Creation. He wrote, "The creation is the Bible of the deist." He argued that all organized religions, especially Christianity, were human inventions designed to "terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." Kevin: So he’s saying, 'Look at the stars and the mountains to see God, not this book written by men thousands of years ago.' Michael: Exactly. He calls the Bible a book filled with "rapine, cruelty, and murder." He famously declares, "My own mind is my own church." He’s doing to the authority of the church exactly what he did to the authority of the king. He’s telling the common person, "You don't need a priest to tell you what to believe, just as you don't need a king to tell you how to live. Use your own reason." Kevin: And the people who celebrated him for saying that about King George were probably not thrilled to hear it about their pastor. Michael: Not at all. When he finally gets out of prison and returns to America in 1802, at the invitation of President Thomas Jefferson, he finds a country that has turned on him. His political enemies, the Federalists, use The Age of Reason as a weapon. They brand him a filthy, drunken infidel. The press attacks him relentlessly. Kevin: So his revolutionary ideas were celebrated when they served a political purpose, but the moment they challenged personal, cultural beliefs, he became an enemy. Michael: A pariah. The story that always gets me is that the town of New Rochelle, New York—which had gifted him a farm in gratitude for his service during the revolution—denied him the right to vote, claiming he wasn't a true American citizen. Kevin: That's just devastating. The man who helped invent the country is told he doesn't belong in it. It’s a brutal fall from grace. He went from being the voice of the people to a social outcast. Michael: He died in 1809 in New York City, with only a handful of people at his funeral. The public memory of him was so tarnished that a nursery rhyme circulated: "Poor Tom Paine! There he lies: Nobody laughs and nobody cries. Where he has gone or how he fares, Nobody knows and nobody cares." Decades later, Theodore Roosevelt would dismiss him as a "filthy little atheist." Kevin: Wow. To go from being compared to Washington to being the subject of a cruel children's rhyme. It’s a tragic story about the cost of being radically consistent.

Michael: It really is. He was a man out of time, in a way. He believed in the power of pure reason, and he followed it wherever it led, even when it led him right off a cliff in public opinion. Kevin: So what's the real takeaway here? It feels like more than just a history lesson. It’s a cautionary tale about the limits of revolution, or maybe the limits of our tolerance for it. Michael: I think it's about the nature of foundational ideas. Paine gave America a powerful new operating system: reason, liberty, and the courage to question authority. But it seems society only wanted to run the 'political' application, not the 'religious' one. He refused to pick and choose. Kevin: He saw the divine right of kings and the divine authority of scripture as two sides of the same coin—unquestionable power that demanded blind obedience. Michael: And he wanted to smash both. His life forces us to ask a really uncomfortable question: what authorities in our own lives are we still afraid to question with our own 'common sense'? What are the modern thrones we protect? Kevin: That’s a powerful thought. His legacy isn't just in the founding of a nation, but in the challenge he poses to every generation. The person who gives you the freedom to think can't control what you think with that freedom. For him, that was a lonely and tragic reality. Michael: It leaves you wondering: which of our modern 'common sense' beliefs are just customs we haven't questioned yet? It’s a challenge that feels as urgent today as it did in 1776. We'd love to hear what you think. Kevin: Yeah, find us online and let us know. What's one 'obvious' truth you think needs a dose of Thomas Paine's skepticism? It could be anything from work culture to social norms. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.