A nation-to-be took note of his writing. It was, after all, "Common Sense." The Englishman Thomas Paine had been in Philadelphia for barely a year when he began agitating against England's monarchy and for America's Independence.
Citizens hailed him. The government hired him. But Thomas Paine had other ideological battles to wage. And so he was off. Penning pamphlets about organized religion and the rights of man. They brought him fame, and made him an outcast.
Another writer, Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham, says Thomas Paine would be appalled at the America of George Bush and John Ashcroft, and chances are they wouldn't like him much either. "Nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments and common sense."
