At least one Founding Father was a SOCIALIST!

[malada]

Reading the complete works of Thomas Paine has been enlightening and amusing. (His open letter to General Howe was a chuckle fest.) Digging into The Rights of Man - he states that after abolishing the parasites known as royalty and their wasteful, inefficient, corrupt government, so much money could be saved that taxes could be slashed and money put aside for the education of children (gasp), the housing and retraining of the homeless (horrors) and the dedication of funds for the worn out or aged out workers so they're not begging in the streets!

Socialism! Communism! Welfare state!

I'd like to think that today Mr Paine would see the billionaire fat cats and their "think tanks" - I'm looking at you Federalist Society - as the new royalty to be gotten rid of. Like the kings of old they seek to manipulate the levers of power to their own benefit, not the country's benefit - and like the royalty of old, power will be handed down to their children and nobody else's.

Wasteful. Inefficient. Unjust.

We need a man like Thomas Paine again.

Comments

[warriorsavant]

Paine was generally right, the other Founding Parental Units used his inflammatory writing to, well, inflame the people, then quickly discarded him, as a "dirty little atheist."

[ndrosen]

And in “Agrarian Justice,” Paine proposed collecting land rents from the holders of land — keep in mind that the people who hold or own land have done nothing to create the land itself, although they may deserve credit for improvements on the land — and using the revenue for the public wellbeing.