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View Full Version : Tom Paine, America's 1st Nanny-State Liberal



Libhater
12-21-2013, 11:42 AM
By 1791, Paine was writing with eloquent passion of "the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty." Meeting this obligation, he argues in the second part of 'Rights of Man', is a key purpose of government. He calls for provisions for poor parents when a child is born, for government support in paying for elementary eduication, for pensions to the elderly who cannot work, and even for public help with funeral expenses for those who cannot afford them. "This support, " he then argues, "is not of the nature of a charity but of a right." Public assistance to the poor turns out to be a true social obligation.
In 1797, Paine devoted a short pamphlet titled 'Agrarian Justice' to laying out more fully his case for this proto-welfare state and for why it should be viewed as a right of those in need.

Paine understands social obligations as arising primarily out of the importance of individual freedom and choice. Government exists to address violations of rights to freedom and choice, and it must occasionally do so by a modest redistribution of material resources to keep the poorest from falling beneath even the minimal standard of human dignity.

The Great Debate by Yuval Levin...pgs 121-123

ps: I see the rotten apple hadn't fallen far from the tree when considering the same libs of today have the same love of big government

Alyosha
12-21-2013, 11:47 AM
There are nuances of geoism that you will never grasp because you tend to view things through a black/white lens.

Chris
12-21-2013, 11:52 AM
From an earlier thread, The history of the left-right divide (http://thepoliticalforums.com/threads/19423-The-history-of-the-left-right-divide?highlight=paine):


The fundamental utopian goal at the core of Paine’s thinking—the goal of liberating the individual from the constraints of the obligations imposed upon him by his time, his place, and his relations to others—remains essential to the left in America. But the failure of Enlightenment-liberal principles and the institutions built upon them to deliver on that bold ambition and therefore on Paine’s hopes of eradicating prejudice, poverty, and war seemed to force the left into a choice between the natural-rights theories that Paine thought would offer means of attaining his goal and the goal itself. In time, the utopian goal was given preference, and a vision of the state as a direct provider of basic necessities and largely unencumbered by the restraints of Paine’s Enlightenment liberalism arose to advance it.

...Today’s left plainly exhibits this combination of material collectivism and moral individualism. The role it affords to the government and its links to European social thought might at first suggest that this attitude leans toward communitarianism. But its American form is actually a radical form of individualism, moved by much the same passion for justice that Paine had and by much the same desire to free people of the fetters of tradition, religion, and the moral or social expectations of those around them.


Paine, I think, stands astride the left-right divide.

Green Arrow
12-21-2013, 12:26 PM
Thomas Paine couldn't fit in any political ideology. He was a geoist, a socialist, an anarchist, a social democrat, etc. Like me, he was an everythingist. Trying to simplify his stance into the common left-right divide is impossible.

It's also a bit disrespectful. Our revolution was successful because of him.

Libhater
12-21-2013, 12:55 PM
Thomas Paine couldn't fit in any political ideology. He was a geoist, a socialist, an anarchist, a social democrat, etc. Like me, he was an everythingist. Trying to simplify his stance into the common left-right divide is impossible.

It's also a bit disrespectful. Our revolution was successful because of him.

Tom Paine was an extreme leftist by anyone's imagination. The book 'The Great Debate' centers on the political differences between America's first leftist Tom Paine and the political writings of our first Conservative voice with Edmund Burke. The book outlines the differences between the two men and their political stances during the time of the French Revolution and the American Revolution where Paine was a staunch supporter of the French Revolution while Burke was against such mob rule. As you can see from the OP that Paine supported a nanny state. Burke didn't believe that the government should have the role in confiscating privately owned lands, or for redistributing $$ from the wealthy to support the needy the way Paine did. The two people represent the beginnings of both the liberal and the Conservative mindset going forward.

Gerrard Winstanley
12-22-2013, 05:38 AM
Tom Paine was an extreme leftist by anyone's imagination. The book 'The Great Debate' centers on the political differences between America's first leftist Tom Paine and the political writings of our first Conservative voice with Edmund Burke. The book outlines the differences between the two men and their political stances during the time of the French Revolution and the American Revolution where Paine was a staunch supporter of the French Revolution while Burke was against such mob rule. As you can see from the OP that Paine supported a nanny state. Burke didn't believe that the government should have the role in confiscating privately owned lands, or for redistributing $$ from the wealthy to support the needy the way Paine did. The two people represent the beginnings of both the liberal and the Conservative mindset going forward.
The Founding Fathers stopped commending the French Revolution when it took a radical turn, Paine being no exception. Up to a point, it was led by American-style moderates.

Libhater
12-22-2013, 08:45 AM
The Founding Fathers stopped commending the French Revolution when it took a radical turn, Paine being no exception. Up to a point, it was led by American-style moderates.

I'm not quite done with reading the 'Great Debate' between the political philosophies of both Paine and Burke, but an interesting take from the book is that Burke didn't believe in a revolution for the sake of creating a mob rule that wouldn't have any clue as to what type of government to set up in place of the one that was being overthrown. Paine doesn't seem to have an idea as to what would happen to the French people or the French government once the radicals won the day. It does seem kind of ironic that Burke being a Conservative would side with the present day French government during the 1790s. But his philosophy was that the Jacobins shouldn't revolt with the idea of totally removing the current government, that the process of changing government to suit the needs of the people should be done in increments over time.

Green Arrow
12-22-2013, 01:44 PM
I'm not quite done with reading the 'Great Debate' between the political philosophies of both Paine and Burke, but an interesting take from the book is that Burke didn't believe in a revolution for the sake of creating a mob rule that wouldn't have any clue as to what type of government to set up in place of the one that was being overthrown. Paine doesn't seem to have an idea as to what would happen to the French people or the French government once the radicals won the day. It does seem kind of ironic that Burke being a Conservative would side with the present day French government during the 1790s. But his philosophy was that the Jacobins shouldn't revolt with the idea of totally removing the current government, that the process of changing government to suit the needs of the people should be done in increments over time.

Why are you getting all your information from this 'Great Debate' book, rather than directly from Thomas Paine's own works and actions?

Chris
12-22-2013, 02:03 PM
I'm not quite done with reading the 'Great Debate' between the political philosophies of both Paine and Burke, but an interesting take from the book is that Burke didn't believe in a revolution for the sake of creating a mob rule that wouldn't have any clue as to what type of government to set up in place of the one that was being overthrown. Paine doesn't seem to have an idea as to what would happen to the French people or the French government once the radicals won the day. It does seem kind of ironic that Burke being a Conservative would side with the present day French government during the 1790s. But his philosophy was that the Jacobins shouldn't revolt with the idea of totally removing the current government, that the process of changing government to suit the needs of the people should be done in increments over time.

But "the radicals won the day" imprisoned Paine and but for the stroke of accident was nearly beheaded over disagreements. Those radicals were, imo, the origins of the left, of modern liberalism/progressivism If you read Agrarian Justice, for example, he does not suggest tearing down the social order but making it fairer.

iustitia
12-22-2013, 03:10 PM
I'm amazed that Paine is just another pinko. Here I thought he was the author of Common Sense which galvanized the American Patriots, but apparently being a geoist/georgist makes him a socialist rather than a naive, socially-minded republican.

Libhater
12-22-2013, 03:52 PM
Why are you getting all your information from this 'Great Debate' book, rather than directly from Thomas Paine's own works and actions?

Most all of the information coming from the book 'The Great Debate' centers around the works and or quotes from both Burke and Paine.

Green Arrow
12-22-2013, 04:14 PM
I'm amazed that Paine is just another pinko. Here I thought he was the author of Common Sense which galvanized the American Patriots, but apparently being a geoist/georgist makes him a socialist rather than a naive, socially-minded republican.

Uhm, he did write Common Sense.

iustitia
12-22-2013, 05:06 PM
I was being sarcastic.

Chris
12-24-2013, 10:53 AM
Jonah Goldberg has an op-ed on the Duck Dynasty flap that he relates to the Burke v Paine argument: 'Duck Dynasty' and a free society (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-duck-dynasty-society-20131224,0,3960913.column#ixzz2oPMj4LtO)


...The free-speech issues are the inevitable consequence of a venerable argument about what a free society is.

Maybe I see it that way because I have Yuval Levin's wonderful book "The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and the Birth of Right and Left" fresh in my mind. Levin chronicles the argument between the Irish-born British parliamentarian and the English-born American polemicist over the role of government and the merits of the French Revolution.

As Levin shows, Burke, the father of modern conservatism, and Paine, an early champion of progressivism, were liberals in the sense that both defended a free society. But their assumptions about human nature and society led them to very different places.

Paine saw the individual as the irreducible unit of society. Paine held that with the right application of scientific principles, an egalitarian utopia could be achieved. It would simply require tearing down the prejudices, customs and habits of the old order, just as the French revolutionaries were doing. Paine eventually saw few distinctions between legal and cultural impediments to liberty, which is why he came to denounce Christianity as "repugnant to reason."

For Burke, no man is an island. We are born into families and communities, and it is these and other institutions that give our lives meaning. Society is a complex and mysterious ecosystem, and no set of experts or "sophisters … and calculators" can impose scientific perfection on it. Any attempt to do so would threaten to destroy all that makes life meaningful. A reformer and proponent of progress, Burke nonetheless believed that progress must be accomplished gradually, not in one fell swoop of a social engineer's pen.

Perhaps Levin's most telling insight is that all of Burke's metaphors about government are about space, while Paine's are about movement. The Burkean believes government is there to give all of the institutions of society room to thrive and discover what is good through trial and error. The Paineian see progress as a society-wide movement, led by government, with no safe harbors from the Cause. This is why Paine was one of the earliest advocates of a welfare state — funded by a massive inheritance tax — that would intervene to empower every individual.

...

Libhater
12-24-2013, 02:45 PM
Jonah Goldberg has an op-ed on the Duck Dynasty flap that he relates to the Burke v Paine argument: 'Duck Dynasty' and a free society (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-duck-dynasty-society-20131224,0,3960913.column#ixzz2oPMj4LtO)

The major difference between Paine the Enlightenment favorite of the Egalitarian/Progressive crowd and that of Burke the Conservative is that Paine didn't believe in set governments, in Monarchs or anything that resembled an orderly set of laws and family traditions for a society, and was ready to join with a revolution at a drop of a dime, while Burke did believe in a set government, but was willing to initiate new laws etc. --done in an orderly fashion over time to correct the wrongs of a government that may seem to be getting too much power. Burke believed that a revolution and the eventual overthrow of a set government/monarch like that in France during the early 1790s would disrupt the people to where they weren't ready to replace it with a new government. What type of government could the Jacobins possibly have to replace a long standing one? They were after all nothing more than an unruly mob.

Chris
12-24-2013, 03:43 PM
The major difference between Paine the Enlightenment favorite of the Egalitarian/Progressive crowd and that of Burke the Conservative is that Paine didn't believe in set governments, in Monarchs or anything that resembled an orderly set of laws and family traditions for a society, and was ready to join with a revolution at a drop of a dime, while Burke did believe in a set government, but was willing to initiate new laws etc. --done in an orderly fashion over time to correct the wrongs of a government that may seem to be getting too much power. Burke believed that a revolution and the eventual overthrow of a set government/monarch like that in France during the early 1790s would disrupt the people to where they weren't ready to replace it with a new government. What type of government could the Jacobins possibly have to replace a long standing one? They were after all nothing more than an unruly mob.


I'd put it slightly different. Paine believed with new-found enlightened reason, man could reinvent government, society, man himself; Burke believed these things arose if not evolved gradually and that tinkering with the social order with anything but the greatest prudence would level it and leave nothing in its place.

donttread
12-24-2013, 06:36 PM
Tom is my favorite deist. But you can't fault him for those views because on paper they make perfect sense , but today you have 230 years of real world experience that shows that welfare doesn't work.
Having said that yes certain basics should be available like emergent health care, a basic education . But you can at least ask for work in return for cash assistance




By 1791, Paine was writing with eloquent passion of "the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty." Meeting this obligation, he argues in the second part of 'Rights of Man', is a key purpose of government. He calls for provisions for poor parents when a child is born, for government support in paying for elementary eduication, for pensions to the elderly who cannot work, and even for public help with funeral expenses for those who cannot afford them. "This support, " he then argues, "is not of the nature of a charity but of a right." Public assistance to the poor turns out to be a true social obligation.
In 1797, Paine devoted a short pamphlet titled 'Agrarian Justice' to laying out more fully his case for this proto-welfare state and for why it should be viewed as a right of those in need.

Paine understands social obligations as arising primarily out of the importance of individual freedom and choice. Government exists to address violations of rights to freedom and choice, and it must occasionally do so by a modest redistribution of material resources to keep the poorest from falling beneath even the minimal standard of human dignity.

The Great Debate by Yuval Levin...pgs 121-123

ps: I see the rotten apple hadn't fallen far from the tree when considering the same libs of today have the same love of big government

Libhater
12-24-2013, 09:14 PM
I'd put it slightly different. Paine believed with new-found enlightened reason, man could reinvent government, society, man himself; Burke believed these things arose if not evolved gradually and that tinkering with the social order with anything but the greatest prudence would level it and leave nothing in its place.

Exactly!

Green Arrow
12-24-2013, 11:13 PM
The major difference between Paine the Enlightenment favorite of the Egalitarian/Progressive crowd and that of Burke the Conservative is that Paine didn't believe in set governments, in Monarchs or anything that resembled an orderly set of laws and family traditions for a society, and was ready to join with a revolution at a drop of a dime, while Burke did believe in a set government, but was willing to initiate new laws etc. --done in an orderly fashion over time to correct the wrongs of a government that may seem to be getting too much power. Burke believed that a revolution and the eventual overthrow of a set government/monarch like that in France during the early 1790s would disrupt the people to where they weren't ready to replace it with a new government. What type of government could the Jacobins possibly have to replace a long standing one? They were after all nothing more than an unruly mob.

Yes, Paine understood that trusting the government to fix itself via its own methods was ludicrous folly, which is why he supported the American revolution (and saved it from failure). Burke was the type who would have sided with the British. Does your book tell you that?

Mister D
12-24-2013, 11:17 PM
Yes, Paine understood that trusting the government to fix itself via its own methods was ludicrous folly, which is why he supported the American revolution (and saved it from failure). Burke was the type who would have sided with the British. Does your book tell you that?

I would have too. Paine exemplifies the worst of liberalism, IMO.

Chris
12-25-2013, 12:19 AM
Yes, Paine understood that trusting the government to fix itself via its own methods was ludicrous folly, which is why he supported the American revolution (and saved it from failure). Burke was the type who would have sided with the British. Does your book tell you that?

Burke sided with the Americans. He saw in them not a desire to throw out the past but to find a path through it to build on. The thing I marvel at reading the Federalist Papers is how steeped it is in the history of political theory.

While I think paid wanted to remake man I don't think he was the leveler of then existing social institutions that the French were. A gearing Justice doesn't tear down inherited wealth but just takes a bit of it to redistribute.

Modern liberalism/progressivism follows the French not Paine.

Green Arrow
12-25-2013, 03:06 AM
Burke sided with the Americans. He saw in them not a desire to throw out the past but to find a path through it to build on. The thing I marvel at reading the Federalist Papers is how steeped it is in the history of political theory.

While I think paid wanted to remake man I don't think he was the leveler of then existing social institutions that the French were. A gearing Justice doesn't tear down inherited wealth but just takes a bit of it to redistribute.

Modern liberalism/progressivism follows the French not Paine.

If you read Burke's speeches to the House of Commons, you'll find that he only supported our cause because he felt like it would ultimately make us more likely to return to the British Crown. It wasn't out of a sincere desire that we be free. He was a monarchist.

Chris
12-25-2013, 10:34 AM
If you read Burke's speeches to the House of Commons, you'll find that he only supported our cause because he felt like it would ultimately make us more likely to return to the British Crown. It wasn't out of a sincere desire that we be free. He was a monarchist.

But he did truly believe in the liberty of the people. Just didn't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”
― Edmund Burke


Besides, monarchy is better than democracy because then at least the rulers have skin in the game.

Libhater
12-25-2013, 11:55 AM
The thing I think Green Arrow is confusing here is his associating similarities with both the French Revolution and the American fight for Independence. You'll notice that Burke never once referred to the American fight for Independence as being a revolution, whereas, the French revolted against a standing monarchy/government while the colonists fought against a foreign monarch/government in which to establish their own government. Chris has stated it rather nicely here and quite often that Burke saw government as being a firm base in which to continue a constitutional government, and if and when those in government get too much power or dictate policy against the wants of the people, then the need to tweak it lies within the makeup of the Senate and the Congress. Again, Chris stated it rather nicely that Paine was willing to throw the baby out with the bath water leaving virtually nothing in its place in which to establish a viable government for both the French and the Colonists.

Chris
12-25-2013, 12:28 PM
The thing I think Green Arrow is confusing here is his associating similarities with both the French Revolution and the American fight for Independence. You'll notice that Burke never once referred to the American fight for Independence as being a revolution, whereas, the French revolted against a standing monarchy/government while the colonists fought against a foreign monarch/government in which to establish their own government. Chris has stated it rather nicely here and quite often that Burke saw government as being a firm base in which to continue a constitutional government, and if and when those in government get too much power or dictate policy against the wants of the people, then the need to tweak it lies within the makeup of the Senate and the Congress. Again, Chris stated it rather nicely that Paine was willing to throw the baby out with the bath water leaving virtually nothing in its place in which to establish a viable government for both the French and the Colonists.

Well, while I agree the French did, and subsequent modern liberal/progressive movement has, thrown out the baby with the bathwater, I don't think that fits Paine. Remember, the French were going to take his head, they were a bloody lot.

Libhater
12-25-2013, 12:49 PM
Well, while I agree the French did, and subsequent modern liberal/progressive movement has, thrown out the baby with the bathwater, I don't think that fits Paine. Remember, the French were going to take his head, they were a bloody lot.

All the more reason for anyone (including Paine himself) to be against any type of revolutionary bloody lot of misfits who have no clue as to who precisely and what precisely type of government would be replacing the old one.

Chris
07-22-2014, 04:39 PM
Thomas Paine Versus Edmund Burke (http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/thomas-paine-versus-edmund-burke-part-1) by libertarian George H. Smith, author of The System of Liberty.

I've only begun to read it, so not necessarily recommending, but it's there.