Claims Thomas Paine said, "Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself."
Thomas Paine is a transatlantic political icon, a plain-speaking revolutionary campaigner whose writings—more than those of any other figure—captured the zeitgeist of the two most significant political events of the eighteenth century: the American and French revolutions. As far as public consciousness is concerned, his enduring political legacy is curiously schizophrenic in that he is lauded at once by the libertarian right in the United States and the socialist and social democratic left in Britain. Despite having been the subject of much valuable scholarly attention throughout the twentieth century, there has been little interest expressed in Paine that has not been of a purely historical or biographical nature.Footnote 1 This is in one sense unsurprising, given his role as a prominent political actor and the fascinating, tumultuous life that he led, parts of which remain mysterious.Footnote 2 However, at the same time, there has been a marked neglect shown to the distinct theoretical content of his writings. He is customarily treated as a mere "vulgarizer of Locke,"Footnote 3 a rhetorician, pamphleteer, and polemicist rather than a political theorist of any note.