A tribute to the contributions of Thomas Paine, a mostly forgotten champion of minority rights in US history.
By Blake Matich
If America is the ‘city on the hill’, it occupies the territory through inheritance, endowed to the nation by Thomas Paine, the original proprietor of the moral high ground. I ask you to ruminate on everything you know about Thomas Paine. What conclusions arise in this pondering? I propose that the current array of issues that dominate public discourse, with specific reference to LGBT rights, indicate an intolerable ignorance of Thomas Paine’s contributions, and a conscious apathy towards the ideals of America’s foundation in order to retain the relative comforts of said ignorance.
Why the need to illuminate his ideas? Well, it is not contentious to say that Paine is certainly not celebrated in the same monumental and lionised fashion as that of his revolutionary colleagues, such as Jefferson and Washington. Shockingly, there is no memorial to Paine in Washington D.C., a place that owes its existence as much to Paine’s efforts as to any other.
After all, what do we all have in common? This may seem quite a nebulous question, but the answer has revolutionised mankind. Paine answered it with a single idea – ‘rights’. Indeed to say it was an avant-garde idea at the time would be to understate it indefensibly. Today the idea that human, or rather, ‘natural rights’ are innate is taken for granted, when in actuality, we should reference the idea like any other construct. Several thinkers had contemplated the notion before, notably, John Locke and Thomas Hobbs, however it was Paine who fervently propagated the idea, his doctrine, as he saw it, was to “Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself”.
Locke argued that natural rights were that of life, liberty, and property. Obviously Thomas Jefferson, in lieu of Paine, critiqued this slightly, albeit fundamentally, with the most important and encompassing right of all, the right to pursue happiness. Paine’s influence on these American ideals was substantial, as the late great Christopher Hitchens describes him, “he was the moral author of the Declaration of Independence”.
So what now? These rights are known to exist, and in some cases, tangibly so, but if we remove our magnifying glass from the pages of history and readjust our gaze contemporaneously, we are confronted with obstructions to these rights. For some unconscionable reason LGBT Rights have been, and are continuing to be, put to popular votes around the United States, and other parts of the world ignored, or worse, legislated against.
I guess there is some degree of solace in the progress being made, albeit an acute one; that is beside the issue, as Paine argued in his ‘Rights of Man’, the iconic piece, dedicated to George Washington and the wish that rights would become as universal as Washington’s benevolence, these rights should be upheld by government, that role should be its primary if not sole responsibility, and failure to do so should result in overthrow.
Moreover, whilst the government should uphold these natural rights, such as with The Declaration of Independence, they may not dictate them. For this reason, impeding one’s right to happiness (providing said pursuit does not detract from other persons pursuits), by way of putting it to a vote rather than substantiating its position as inalienable, is the kind of oppression that natural rights seek to eradicate. Rachel Maddow in discussion of this argument highlights the relevance of Paine today; “But here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights”.
One must recognise the blatantly obvious notion, that if America is to be the ‘shining light’ originally intended, but refuses to embrace its potential ascension to moral high ground, then the rest of the world must occupy much more dire straits. This idea is clearly evident today as we witness the oppression occurring in Russia, manifesting without apprehension, and even flauntingly in the knowledge that it possesses the world’s focus.
In 2013, less than a year before the nation hosted the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, laws were passed banning public LGBT propaganda and display. The law itself, nebulous as it is, employs the euphemism of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ as to avoid direct designation. Conservatives often gallingly use the terms like ‘non-traditional’ or ‘non-natural’ in a vain attempt at emboldening their position. The problem with the term ‘non-traditional’ is that it wrongly assumes tradition is a positive thing. Why is tradition respected to such a degree? In a vast spectrum of examples, tradition is a horrid affair, the maintenance of an idea or practice simply because it has lasted to this point is irrational and often revealingly contemptuous.
Think of the traditions that have withered when encountered with moral, sceptical and rational thought. Take slavery for example, the practice is certainly not extinct but since it lost its traditional status it has certainly diminished, though it took decades of development, propagation and arguing to uproot it in Western countries. America itself is a symbol of anti-traditionalism, if Thomas Paine hadn’t voiced his contrarian views on the traditions of monarchy and servility then civilization would be a very different beast. Think of current traditions that permeate societies around the world, such as stoning women to death, indoctrinating children with disturbingly cultish ideas, forcing women into barbaric and animalistic cycles of reproduction, and the suppression of rights. Tradition, like any idea that asks for the abandonment of one’s critical faculty should be treated with suspicion until it proves itself to be of standing. As far as I can tell, ‘traditional relationships’ have not provided such evidence as to afford it the dismissive position it presumes.
Guaranteed rights, supported by the state, as demanded by Thomas Paine, are the solution. Even the most basic of protection serves as a platform from which understanding can eventually promulgate unhindered as the indoctrinated generations fade and the new rise with minds unchained.
Although a rather admittedly terse and particular rehearsal of Paine’s contemporary relevance to public discourse, it is clear that the founding moral principles instilled in the exceptionalism of America have been abrogated reprehensibly. As President Carter quite aptly put it, “America did not invent human rights…human rights invented America”, thus, right’s are not a commodity, and they may not be treated as such; innate rights have slowly penetrated essentialist views held by society in the past and through Paine they may continue to do so. In order to once again shine from the hill, to set an example for itself, and the rest of the world, the government has to turn on the lights.
Blake Matich is an Australian Political Science student, majoring in International Relations and American Politics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.