Thomas Paine

I usually refer to reviews by Amazon.com for books but for "Thomas Paine" by Craig Nelson I refer to a review by Edward J. Dodson. It may just be too early for good reviews at other places. I am not familiar with the www.cooperativeindividualism.org/ but it does look interesting. Like the review by Dodson, it looks a little to Anglo for me. (Therefore I do not now recommend his course.)

I do agree with Dodson that Nelson may miss at his interpertation of background. What is good about this book is that it comes close to placing Paine in the "good" camp. Madison, Jefferson, Mason and Paine are the "good" guys. Hamilton, Adams, and Washington are the "bad" guys.

This book has valuable information that can also be found in American Aurora. To understand American beginnings these books should be along side Hogeland's The Whiskey Rebellion and Leonard L. Richards' book, Shays's Rebellion. They represent a change in writers from slamming the "slave holders" to seeing big government mercantilists for the thieves they were. We can only hope freedom loving founders will continue to be portrayed honestly.

Here is an excellent paragraph from page 334. These authors lean left and worship "progressives" at times. But their history beats the lies of the "interested" mercantilists.:

"In at least the United States today, however, that coalition seems to have come to an end, with the Adams-Hamilton style of government triumphant, as even American news anchor Walter Cronkite admitted in 2005: 'the ruling class is the rich, who really command our industry, our commerce, and our finance. And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.' While Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson would be crestfallen that the modern-day American federal government is the reserve of a new aristocracy -- multimillionaire plutocrats and their corporate sponsors -- Adams and Hamilton would be just as shocked to learn that their admired ruling elite no longer even pretends to lives of virtue."

I would call those with a lack of virtue not plutocrats (rule by the rich) but oligarchs (rule by oppressors in favor of a class system).