The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) is my political
hero. I didn’t adopt his name as a nom de guerre because
I agreed with all he wrote. I hubristically purloined
it because I admired the force of his writing. “Common
Sense” was the most influential pamphlet in the history of the
world and – had the internet existed in the 18th Century – it
would have been a blog post. In a vain (in both senses of the
word) attempt at sympathetic magic, I hoped – when I began this
blog over eleven
years ago – that it might have half as much effect.

He left school at 12 and never went to university. He was an
autodidact, spending spare cash on books and
spare time on attending lectures and debates. It speaks to
his greatness that he is claimed these days by both Left and
Right – each conveniently ignoring those parts of his thought
that don’t match their thinking. He believed in society
taking care of the weak and unfortunate but he did not confuse
society in any way with the state. He was a sceptic when it came
to government. He was reviled and assaulted in the USA he helped
found because no sooner was the revolution over than he
was attacking corruption in the new government. He was
sentenced to death in Revolutionary France, where he sat in the
National Assembly, for opposing the execution of the King
and denouncing the Terror.

He died thinking himself a failure; disappointed with the
outcomes of both the French and American revolutions and sad that
he had not been able to incite one in England. But his words
still echo. He proved that one person can make a difference if
prepared to put his work before his safety. He’s not alive any
more but he’s still dangerous. More so perhaps than the Lenin and
Marx with whom Steinbeck once bracketed him. His ideas will live
as long as free men breathe.

I was pleasantly surprised by the even-handed approach of Melvyn
Bragg – a Labour luvvie if ever there was one – in presenting
Paine’s story in his “Radical Lives” series. I commend his
programme to you. 

Melvyn Bragg’s Radical Lives E02 Rights of
Man… by DemonPreyer1 

At this moment of British Crisis, with rogues on both sides
of the referendum debate playing on our fears, I
also commend to you the words from Paine’s American
Crisis that Washington read aloud to his troops before the
Battle of Trenton;

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier
and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the
service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves
the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is
not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us,
that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness
only that gives everything its value.” 

I will not lower myself to conscript the dead to my cause as
both Leave and Remain have done with Thatcher and
Churchill. For all I know, Paine might have supported the
EU, while demanding more effectively than we have ever done the
application of real democracy and the extirpation of
corruption in its governance. Still, I feel sure that the
emotional response of free men and women to the aristos of the
European elite should be the same as that of Paine to the “asses
for lions” of the 18th Century. Our modern aristos are
self-selected, rather than picked at random by nature, but their
contempt for the people they seek to rule and their sense of
entitlement to lord it over us, is every bit as
profound. They should meet the same fate and I hope – in my own
name not Tom’s – that June 23rd begins their procession to a
figurative guillotine.