Russia still at it!!

[Peter1469]

Some say without Tom Paine the Revolution might have failed. Without a successful revolution we would have no founding. What does it take for someone to be labeled as a founder?

Even after all Paine did, he died penniless and only 6 people showed up to his funeral. He had no friends.

At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Evening Post that was in turn quoting from The American Citizen,^[84] which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good, and much harm". Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. Many years later the writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:


Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two $#@!es filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.^[85]

[Max Rockatansky]

What difference does it make? It bumps your thread anyway.

True...but also makes you look like a cyberstalker.

Will I be reported and thread-banned for saying so? Only time will tell.

[Hal Jordan]

Thomas Paine wasn't a Founding Father. He wrote his opinion. That you give so much credit shows a lack of confidence in your own thinking.

Okay, I've been kinda quiet recently, but I can not refrain from commenting on this.

So, the first to publicly proclaim the need for independence was not a Founding Father? The man who laid the groundwork for declaring independence was not a Founding Father? The man whose writings the Declaration of Independence was so clearly dependent on that some historians believe he actually authored it was not a Founding Father? Then who the hell is?

In a book on the great thinkers of western civilization, Modern Thinkers, Van Buren Denslow had this to say about Thomas Paine. "If a set of opinions could be entitled to a place among political philosophers by millions having come to believe in and praise them, then indeed Paine would stand, more than any other, as the founder of the American school of political philosophy, as he certainly is the founder of the creed of American democracy."

Please, at least do some cursory research on the founding of America. That Thomas Paine was a very important Founding Father is clear to anyone who looks at the founding of America.

[Max Rockatansky]

Okay, I've been kinda quiet recently, but I can not refrain from commenting on this.

So, the first to publicly proclaim the need for independence was not a Founding Father? The man who laid the groundwork for declaring independence was not a Founding Father? The man whose writings the Declaration of Independence was so clearly dependent on that some historians believe he actually authored it was not a Founding Father? Then who the hell is?

In a book on the great thinkers of western civilization, Modern Thinkers, Van Buren Denslow had this to say about Thomas Paine. "If a set of opinions could be entitled to a place among political philosophers by millions having come to believe in and praise them, then indeed Paine would stand, more than any other, as the founder of the American school of political philosophy, as he certainly is the founder of the creed of American democracy."

Please, at least do some cursory research on the founding of America. That Thomas Paine was a very important Founding Father is clear to anyone who looks at the founding of America.

Agreed. No doubt Paine's writings were critical to the founding of our nation. Thomas Jefferson played no direct part in writing the Constitution since he was in France, but that doesn't mean he isn't a "founding father" or didn't influence it's writing.