As our world begins over again, another Thomas Paine Day is upon us.

To celebrate, I’m sharing some of my Paine fangirl swag.

This is by no means the complete collection. Let’s just call it a representative sample.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Paine!

Today marks the anniversary of Thomas Paine’s death. In the current climate of fear and uncertainty — as well as fierce struggle against injustice, it seems appropriate to celebrate the moral resilience of a man who resisted force, orthodoxy and oppression — even with his last breath.

Here are my thoughts on the death of Thomas Paine, in a post from 2016:

https://paineandfriends.com/2016/06/09/i-have-no-wish-to-believe-on-the-subject/

And Happy Thomas Paine Day, everyone!

The following passage, from the opening pages of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason has always been one of my favorites. Here, Paine famously lays out the tenets of his religious belief in simple, stirring language:

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

“I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy.”

It’s easy to see why these words, clear and heartfelt, are so often quoted. But as usual, Paine is only getting started. Next comes a set of caveats and clarifications:

“But lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

Again as usual, Paine leaves us with no doubt as to exactly where he stands on the subject of religion. But it’s what comes next that is, for me, not just the most interesting, but the truly revolutionary part of Paine’s argument. Here, Paine the critical thinker steps beyond the language of creed (“I believe”) and begins to address — and then to question — the nature of belief itself.

“I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise. They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?”

Paine points out the dangers of what we would today call self-deception — what he, more bluntly, calls “mental lying.”

In fact, throughout The Age of Reason, as in so much of his work — Paine insists on the need to interrogate belief: to ask ourselves exactly where our beliefs come from, why we hold to them — and where they may lead us. For Paine, received wisdom on any subject is always, always — something to be questioned, and frequently something to be resisted.

How do cruelty and authoritarianism make their inroads into government and culture? Thomas Paine had some very clear ideas about that. The following passage is from Part One of Rights of Man, first published in 1791.

“When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the King only that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice, and in fact. It has its standard every where. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage.

Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot.

Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. The original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the King, divides and subdivides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till at last the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case in France; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through an endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannises under the pretence of obeying.”

So many of Paine’s words still have meaning and resonance for us today, I’ve decided to add a new regular feature to this blog: weekly quotations from the man himself, most of which require very little explanation. Here’s the first:

“Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one, whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow and the slain of America.”

— from The American Crisis 1, December 1776

Paine, of course, is referring to George III, but his words may conjure a more familiar figure, or that of any dictator.

I celebrated Thomas Paine’s birthday for the first time in 2010. It was an inspired impulse, almost a whim. I bought a dozen red roses and a bottle of French brandy at the local market and took them home – where an already-framed portrait of Paine (downloaded from the internet) perched on my writing desk, right next to the computer monitor. I trimmed the roses, arranged them in a big clear-glass mug, and set them next to the picture. Perfect. Or … nearly. I fussed with the tableau until I liked it well enough to snap a phone picture of my small tribute to America’s most radical Founder. I poured myself a glass of brandy, toasted the great man’s memory, and settled down to read his work for an hour or so. The End.

Except it wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning. The hardy roses obliged me by lasting that entire week and into the next. My writing desk was next to my bed, so every morning when I got up, the first thing to engage my eye was usually my little memory-altar to Paine, and that – throughout that week and into the next – made me absurdly happy.

Of course the placement of Paine’s birthday could not have been more perfect in my view. January 29 falls roughly in the middle of the not-quite-two-months between Christmas and my own birthday in February. A low-key, self-designated holiday proved to be just the tonic for the blah (and here in the midwest, literally grey) period of “back to normal routine” after the big winter holidays. Paine’s birthday also made for a nice reflective pause in anticipation of my own birthday. But perhaps the best perk was that my marking of this day was entirely private (at first). A sweet little secret all my own. No one needed to know why I felt bubbly and festive strolling through the grocery aisles on a chilly January day, or why I was buying flowers and liquor with what felt like a silly grin on my face. No one had to know unless I decided to tell them. There was an almost illicit thrill in that. And there were no crowds of gift-buyers to jostle with, no rules to follow, no expectations to meet (or fail to meet). Nope. Just me, Mr. Paine, some beautiful words, and whatever moments of cozy reflection I could squeeze out of the day. I felt like I was making up something from scratch – a little bit like “Baxter Day” in the PBS Kids TV show Arthur.

When I learned that actually, folks had been celebrating Thomas Paine’s birthday since at least 1827 – with feasting, speeches, music and dancing (Dancing? What would the Quaker-raised Paine have made of that?) – I felt delighted anew, as if I had joined a community – a semi-secret fan club stretching back to the earliest days of the Republic.

And it seemed to me that my supposed “homemade holiday” needed to expand a little – to become, like Paine himself, a bit more public-spirited. And what better way to do that than share his words? So when I celebrated Paine’s birthday the following year, I bought the flowers and poured the brandy – but I also made a small gift of Paine’s words to the world, giving away three new copies of The Age of Reason on a book-exchange website (all of them snapped up within hours, as it happened). By 2012, it was five copies. Eventually, I was giving away not just The Age of Reason, but Rights of Man and Common Sense as well. To this day I love the thrill of sending Paine’s words off to strangers living in parts unknown.

And what words they are and how we need them – now more than ever. Happy Birthday, Thomas!

“He [Beethoven] never got his picture on bubble gum cards, did he? Have you ever seen his picture on a bubble gum card? Hmmm? How can you say someone is great who’s never had his picture on bubble gum cards?”

— Lucy Van Pelt, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

Photo: Thomas Paine on Topps collector card, c. 1950s.