Claiming Paine

The contested legacy of the most controversial founding father

Katherine Mangu-Ward from the July 2007 issue

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Kaye is even more flummoxed when he has to explain why Paine would be quoted not just by socialists, suffragists, and abolitionists but by prominent conservative politicians. Conservatives are, in fact, responsible for two of the most memorable recyclings of Paine in recent memory.

The first was Barry Goldwater’s declaration in the 1964 presidential campaign, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” It is often overlooked in other studies, but Kaye picks up an echo of a comment of Paine’s: “Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.”

And then there is Ronald Reagan’s appropriation of Paine. Accepting the nomination at the 1980 Republican convention, he said of the American people: “They are concerned, yes; they’re not frightened. They are disturbed, but not dismayed. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote, during the darkest days of the American Revolution, ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ ” Kaye is aghast: How did Reagan (Reagan!) manage to use Paine to “bolster conservatism and the Republican Party”? “Arguably,” Kaye writes, referring to Reagan’s days as president of Hollywood’s Screen Actors Guild, “only a onetime man of the left could have done so. But arguably as well, he could only have done so because so much of the left had apparently lost contact with Paine.”

Perhaps, as Paine once said, “It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims.” It’s certainly true that Paine was no conservative. But Reagan understood the appeal of Paine’s eloquent populism, regardless of the political particulars. And even conservatives have a certain fondness for revolutions—for the American revolution, at any rate.

There’s another facet of Paine that’s missing here. Kaye’s book is filled with anti-business rhetoric, but nowhere does it quote Paine inveighing against commerce. In fact, Paine seems to have held an early version of the McDonald’s theory of democratic peace: the idea that trade is the ultimate pacific force, as evidenced by the scarcity of wars between any two nations where you can buy a Big Mac. “If commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable of, it would extirpate the system of war, and produce a revolution in the uncivilized state of governments,” he wrote in Rights of Man. That echoed some statements in Common Sense. “Our plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe,” Paine wrote. Considering the economic consequences of breaking ties with England, Paine declared that America “will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.”

If Paine was not a pure libertarian, he did have an undeniable libertarian streak. It was Paine who wrote that “society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.” And it was Paine, in Common Sense, who declared: “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

Even Paine’s economic views belong to the classical liberal tradition. “It may seem odd to many of us today,” Kaye writes, “but like many eighteenth-century radicals confronting the legacies of absolutism, Paine comprehended ‘political liberty and economic liberty’ as mutually independent and imagined that economic freedom served to assure equality of opportunity and results.” In response to Paine’s insight that commerce was a tool to “produce a revolution in the uncivilized state of governments,” Kaye says flatly, without producing any of Paine’s own words, that Paine “increasingly realized that the democratic governments for which he fought would have to politically address inequality and poverty.” It’s true that Paine proposed redistributionist schemes and other social programs throughout his life, but unlike Kaye, Paine saw no contradiction between these proposals and his affection for free trade.

Kaye is right about one theme, to which he returns many times in his book: Everyone sees in Paine what he wants and takes from Paine what he needs. Perhaps this is why Paine appeals to both the radicals Kaye lionizes and the conservatives he despises.

Paine’s core competency was obvious: He was good at revolutions, not so much at their aftermath. Hence his globetrotting lifestyle. Paine’s mentor Benjamin Franklin once said, “Where liberty is, there is my country.” Paine responded, “Where liberty is not, there is my country.” Paine had a lot of policy ideas—something for everyone—but they weren’t unique, and they weren’t his chief contribution to the world. He captured a boisterous, hopeful, fearful moment in American history, and has recreated that same patriotism in the hearts of everyone who reads his words. Other men built the American republic and defined American politics. Paine just cleared the way for them to do it.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is an associate editor of Reason.

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