T-Payne The First

Before the chart-topping auto-tune prototype there was a man who sang the tune of democracy on what seemed like auto-pilot all his life. June 8 marked the 200th anniversary of his death in New York. Bill Moyers is one of the few American journalists to cover the significant date and honor his legacy. Scott Tucker is another one.

So, who was Payne, and where's the love?

"No writer," Jefferson said five years before his own death, "has exceeded Payne in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language." His origins may have been unassuming but he became a trouble-maker the day he picked up his pen for the cause of social justice and equality. His first fight was on behalf of the British tax collectors against the Parliament. He wrote The Case of the Officers of Excise in 1772 in the hopes that they would receive higher wages. But he was soon removed from his government post and sailed to Philadelphia on the behest of Ben Franklin, where he was expected to be a clerk or a tutor.

Payne instantly became an important figure in the literary and political scene in Philly, as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, penning articles that attacked the institution of slavery and the culture it spawned in America. His devotion to freedom and to the bottom grains of society made him more than just a clerk or a tutor. And to label him nothing more than a mere pamphleteer is one of the greatest heresies against humankind.

Payne was England's gift to America, as Lady Liberty was France's gift. One came before the revolution and the other after. Lady Liberty has greeted generations of men and women aspiring for freedom, her presence alone in the harbor attracts the world's libertines. But Lady Liberty may not always stand, while Payne's words will forever draw human beings to greater aspirations, to the rediscovery of freedom and their inner confidence that they can achieve heaven's ends. And besides, who needs a torch when you've got a pen that starts fires in the mind?

American historian Philip S. Foner, known for his ten volume series on the history of the labor movement, said of Payne that like Jefferson "he believed in the dignity of the common man, and with Jefferson urged that all men should have an equal opportunity to shape their own destinies and the destiny of the world in which they lived."

It was the battle of Lexington and Concord that drew his attention to the fight for independence. But before he composed Common Sense in January 1776 that helped launch the revolution, he wrote a short poem called "The Liberty Tree":

From the East to the West blow the trumpet to arms,
Thro' the land let teh sound of it flee:
Let the far and the near all unite with a cheer,
In defense of our Liberty Tree.

Payne was not the first man to call for independence, Adams and others had already proposed the idea but Payne with his declarative and triumphant stamp began history anew. Even the ruling class in America's colonies were inspired by Payne's words and became less hesitant than before to declare their sympathies with Washington. In Common Sesne, Payne wrote:

He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument, and on that ground, I answer generally - That independence being a single simple line, contained within ourselves; and reconciliation, a matter exceedingly perplexed and complicated, and in which a treacherous capricious court is to interfere, gives the answer without a doubt.

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflection. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by, courtesy.

These words won many dedicated admirants and crystallized the swarming political energies at the time into a clear shield for liberty. Payne along with Franklin later drafted the Pennsylvania constitution which included democratic representation, universal suffrage, and religious liberties.

Despite the wide popularity of Common Sense he did not see financial success nor did he intend to. The little profit he did make, he gave to the city of Philadelphia for the purposes of public service and private charity. In our age of free internet publishing that reaches the whole world, profit is still given a weight it does not deserve. Imagine Payne at his keyboard, 200 years after his lonely death, writing about the national security state and calling an end to the income tax.

I imagine Payne a working class hero, but to tell the truth, he would not endorse any political stripe or party. He would not be a strict libertarian because he sincerely believed that the workings of government can be beneficial to the common man, he was among the first founders to call for a more central government to replace the Articles of Confederation. But he did not support Hamiltonian centralism. He thought "the continental belt was too loosely buckled," to guarantee the success of the public good.

In summer 2009, in the midst of history's greatest economic calamity that first begun in America and quickly spread to the rest of the world, the issue of banks, money, and finance is once again on everyone's ears. Payne's shared his own thoughts in Dissertations on Government, The Affairs of the Bank, and Paper Money, in 1786, saying that the operation of banks was instrumental for economic growth. He derailed the farmers' movement for paper money legislation because he rightly thought that it was a debtor's scheme to steal by depreciation of the value of money. I think that he would not have supported the intervention of Congress in the AIG bailouts which canceled out bonus contracts, believing that neither a legislative body or the people had the right to cancel certain kinds of economic contracts already agreed to by third parties. But there is no doubt that he would be appalled by the banks of the current day and the larger role political finance has played in the last century, whose success would be unimaginable if they were not allowed to print trillions of paper money.

Among the working class people, it was only the farmers who favored a paper money currency at the time, and Payne rightly called them out on their buffoonery. Urban workers, merchants and artisans were all against paper money legislation because of the increase risk of inflation which buries savings. His warnings against such unjust practices promoted by farmers proved to me even more than his political pamphlets that he wasn't the type of man to buckle under pressure and avoid controversy. But he was not in favor of all contracts. He hated contracts that would inflict future generations of men and bind them to a rule that they had no say in. He believed that banks are not inherently evil, and that they play an instrumental role in civic society, so much so that he created his own bank with the help of his friends.

But the country he helped create was shockingly ungrateful for his services and ideas. Jefferson, who like Payne was also a deist, was the only Founding Father who remained gracious in their exchanges together and in his departure. Upon arriving in America, after he had scolded Washington and the Alien and Sedition laws, Payne was called a "loathsome reptile," and a "demi-human archbeast" by the furious Federalist press. Even the great Samuel Adams shunned one of mankind's most humble and undervalued friends.

It is not surprising that he has largely been shoved aside in the past two centuries. America is a very religious country, and can be very ungrateful to its true heroes if their names are not propagated by the press and the schools like the names of certain presidents. In a country that loses its memory every generation names that are not repeated often do not sink in. MLK bucks the trend, his name has been uttered by every president since his death, but his message has been discarded. It is not so much Payne that we dismiss, but the spirit of the man and his ideas. And that is not an accident. The American government has always been in a funny relationship with its people because it was founded in part by revolutionaries and oligarchs, but has since been run by oligarchs who have counter-revolutionary aims. And they've been very successful, especially in the last century with the aid of technology and social engineering schools.

Moreover, to be totally forgetful of Payne and his revolutionary ethic because of his religious views shows an immense lack of character. A people who forget their real heroes do not deserve freedom nor prosperity, rather, they deserve slavery and death. In 1809 Americans paid such a low tribute to a man they partly owed their country to. 200 years later and the same beat goes on. We can pay a lasting tribute to the man not by erecting a statue beside Lady Liberty, though that's not a bad idea, but by implementing his ideas and following his principles. We owe it to him and to ourselves. This Independence Day let's read again what he was all about:

My motive and object in all my political works, beginning with Common Sense, the first work I ever published, have been to rescue man from tyranny and false systems and false principles of government, and enable him to be free, and establish government for himself; and I have borne my share of danger in Europe and in America in every attempt I have made for this purpose. And my motive and object in all my publications on religious subjects, beginning with the first part of the Age of Reason, have been to bring man to a right reason that God has him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men and to all creatures; and to excite in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation in his creator, unshackled by the fable and fiction of books, by whatever invented name they may be called. I am happy in the continual contemplation of what I have done, and I thank God that he gave me talents for the purpose and fortitude to do it. It will make the continual consolation of my departing hours, whenever they finally arrive.

The spirit of the revolution died when Payne died, even Jefferson being alive for another seventeen years was not enough to contain the conflicting economic energies in the young Republic. But for the first time since the days of the founding fathers, America is in crisis. This time all of humanity is in crisis too, so our weight is much heavier than what Payne and Jefferson had to carry. Also, our shadows are more overbearing, and at the same time were falling into a new darkness. But that will make our illumination and final confession that much more joyful.

We won't have to remember the spirit of Payne because it will make its way into our bones regardless of our petty objections. Frankly, we no longer have any say in the matter; providence is rolling up her sleeves again.

While it is true that the America of today is nowhere near as radical as the Founding generation, that does not mean that a period of intense radicalization may not soon be on the horizon. A large chunk of Americans continue to denounce the federal's government overseas operations and its domestic dealings, especially regarding banks. Reading Payne's words now can reawaken our broken sense of justice but to appeal again to our better natures we need more than words, we need a new Payne. And discounting the hip hopper, Payne the second has not appeared on the scene yet.

Heroes like Payne never die for good. Freneau, the poet of the revolution, realized that truth and wrote a poem in his memory called At the Decease of Thomas Paine. Below is the last stanza:

What idle hopes!-yes-such a man
May yet appear again.-
When they are dead, they die for aye:
Not so with THOMAS PAINE.