Many of the words that fed the spirit of American independence were penned by Thomas Paine, whose 18th-century writings were immortalized in such tracts as 鈥淐ommon Sense鈥� and 鈥淭he Age of Reason.鈥� This book explores how his ideas helped form a new nation.
Here is an excerpt from Thomas Paine: Crusader for Liberty:
鈥淧aine broke new ground by arguing that true liberty requires freedom from want. Hungry people cannot be free people because they are slaves to their stomachs. Hunger forces them to obey those who offer a morsel of food, however evil they may be. Thus, to promote freedom, Paine outlined a program to correct the abuses he had seen in England. His program called for abolishing 鈥榠rrational and tyrannical laws鈥� that had children hanged for petty offenses. It also looked forward to what we today call the welfare state: free education, unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, and public housing. The money to pay for these programs, Paine noted, could easily come from a progressive tax; that is, those who earned more, paid more taxes. In 1797, Paine wrote Agrarian Justice, a more detailed plan for social reform.鈥�
(Alfred A. Knopf, 165 pp.)
