This is Thomas Paine. He wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which was to the Revolutionary War what Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the Civil War.
Recently conservatives have invoked the name of Thomas Paine and none other than Glenn Beck have endorsed a recreation of this founding father.
More liberal rantings from our founding father and leading light of the "Tea Baggers," Thomas Paine after the flip:
Here is what Thomas Paine had to say about taxes.
Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.
It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labor to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be much better for it in the interim. Make, then, society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund; for it is no reason that, because he might not make a good use of it for himself, another should take it.
My interpretation:
- Wealth is created within society and none apart from it. Therefore those with wealth have an obligation to support society.
- Much wealth is accumulated through the exploitation of labor. Conservatives really don't believe that you can exploit labor. After all how can you pay "too little for labor?" If the workers will work for the wage agreed and you pay them, then you are not paying too little. So Thomas Paine must be a liberal because he believed that laborers were paid too little.
- It is violation of natural law not to give the worker his due.
- Paine concedes that paying workers more may do little to improve their circumstance so he advocates for the government creating a fund from which disbursements can be made to provide for workers in their old age.
Don't take my word for it. Read a little Paine and you will see just how liberal this he really was.
So if in your travels you should encounter a "Tea Bagger," and if the name Thomas Paine should come up, remind them that Thomas Payne was a liberal as was his good friends Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. More on them in another diary.
This link should land you on page 340 of Agrarian Justice by Thomas Paine