Thomas Paine vs. France’s Democracy Taboo

How a humble pamphleteer’s words sparked the American Revolution and lit the fuse of French democracy

Picture this: it’s January 1776, and a skinny pamphlet hits the streets of Philadelphia. Within three months, 120,000 copies are flying off the shelves – that’s roughly one copy for every twenty people in the entire American colonies. The author? A recent English immigrant named Thomas Paine. The book? Common Sense. And honestly, it changed everything.

Thomas Paine wasn’t your typical revolutionary hero. He didn’t come from money, didn’t have fancy connections, and certainly didn’t look the part of someone who’d reshape world history. But sometimes the most ordinary people say the most extraordinary things – and Paine had a gift for cutting through political nonsense with razor-sharp clarity.

“Wait, You’re Telling Me a Tiny Island Rules This Massive Continent?”

Here’s what made Common Sense so damn effective: Paine talked to people like they were, well, people. Not subjects bowing to some distant king, but rational human beings capable of thinking for themselves.

“A small island ruling over a vast continent? Come on, that’s just ridiculous when you really think about it.”

That was essentially Paine’s argument, stripped of all the fancy political theory. And you know what? It worked. Colonial Americans had been grumbling about British rule for years, but many still couldn’t quite imagine actually breaking away. Independence seemed too radical, too dangerous. Paine made it seem like common sense – hence the title.

The timing couldn’t have been better. The Boston Tea Party had happened, tensions were rising, and people like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were desperately looking for someone who could articulate what many were feeling but couldn’t quite express. Enter Paine, fresh off the boat from England with a chip on his shoulder about monarchy and a talent for plain speaking.

From Philadelphia to Paris: The Revolutionary Road Show

But Paine wasn’t done after the American Revolution succeeded. Oh no, this guy was just getting warmed up. While Americans were figuring out how to actually run their new country, Paine packed his bags and headed to France. Why? Because revolution was in the air, and Thomas Paine could smell it from across the Atlantic.

In France, he pulled the same trick that worked so brilliantly in America. He took complex political ideas about natural rights, representative government, and the illegitimacy of hereditary rule, and he made them accessible to ordinary French citizens who were fed up with their own king.

The French ate it up. Paine’s writings helped provide intellectual ammunition for what would become the French Revolution. And when that revolution actually kicked off in 1789, guess who got elected to the French National Assembly? Our boy Thomas, now a bona fide international revolutionary celebrity.

The Price of Being Right Too Early

Here’s where Paine’s story gets complicated – and kind of tragic. See, the guy had principles, and he stuck to them even when it made his life miserable. In France, while other revolutionaries were content to replace the king with themselves, Paine kept pushing for actual democracy. Real representation. Power to the people, not just different elites.

He famously declared that if representatives couldn’t do their jobs properly, citizens had the right to kick them out. Revolutionary stuff, even by revolutionary standards. But it made him enemies among the very people who had once celebrated him.

Then there was the religion thing. Paine believed in God, but he thought organized religion was mostly a scam used by powerful people to control everyone else. In his book The Age of Reason, he argued that people should think for themselves about spiritual matters instead of blindly following whatever their priests told them.

“The world is my country, and to do good is my religion.”

Sounds reasonable enough today, right? But in the 1790s, this kind of talk got you labeled a dangerous radical, an atheist, a threat to social order. Suddenly, the same establishment figures who had cheered when Paine attacked kings were horrified when he questioned bishops.

The Lonely End of a Revolutionary Life

By the time Paine returned to America in his later years, the country he’d helped create had moved on. The founding fathers he’d inspired were now respectable statesmen who found his continued radicalism embarrassing. His attacks on organized religion had made him toxic to many Americans, and his association with the French Revolution – which had grown increasingly bloody – didn’t help his reputation.

He died in 1809, largely forgotten and definitely unappreciated. Only six people attended his funeral. Six! For the guy who basically wrote the intellectual blueprint for American independence.

But here’s the thing about being ahead of your time: eventually, time catches up. Modern historians like Gordon S. Wood have recognized that Common Sense didn’t just argue for American independence – it fundamentally changed how people thought about political authority, popular participation in government, and the rights of ordinary citizens.

Why Thomas Paine Still Matters

So what can we learn from Thomas Paine’s wild ride through history? Maybe that the most important ideas often come from the most unexpected places. Paine wasn’t a university professor or a wealthy plantation owner or a trained lawyer. He was just a guy who thought clearly, wrote plainly, and refused to accept that “this is how things have always been” was a good enough reason to keep doing them.

His great insight was that political power ultimately belongs to the people – not because some ancient document says so, but because it’s the only arrangement that makes logical sense. Kings and nobles claimed to rule by divine right, but Paine pointed out that if you actually believe in human equality (which most Americans claimed to), then hereditary rule is obviously nonsense.

The guy had his flaws, sure. His uncompromising nature made him difficult to work with, and his attacks on religion alienated potential allies. But his core message – that ordinary people are capable of governing themselves and shouldn’t have to bow down to self-appointed elites – remains as relevant today as it was in 1776.

In an age when political discourse often feels dominated by professional politicians, media personalities, and academic experts, maybe we need more voices like Thomas Paine’s: clear, direct, and unafraid to state uncomfortable truths in language everyone can understand.

After all, as Paine himself might have said: in a democracy, common sense should never go out of style.