ABSTRACT
In the last twenty years Thomas Paine has received an explosion of recognition. Much of it is accurate, but much of it is also obfuscation and misrepresentation. Drawn from obscurity, Paine is quoted by the Left and Right in the United States daily, often as an anecdote to colour a political argument. This chapter focuses on Paine's philosophy of government, and attempts to hijack it by the anti-statist ideologies of right-libertarianism and anarchism. Paine transformed and extended Rousseau and Locke, and helped create the creed of the modern progressive view of the nature and role of government. Thomas Paine was not an anarchist. The uncertainty regarding Paine and anarchism goes back to the founding of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association (TPNHA). When William Godwin first proposed the philosophy of anarchism after reading Rights of Man, and after spending hours in Paine's presence arguing the issue of government, the basic principles of anarchism and their demarcation from Paine became clear.
