Thomas Paine and the Wisconsin Workers

A quick note: I see that Tea Party groups are organizing a march to counter the massive protests being spearheaded by pubic workers in Wisconsin, a response to the governors' attempt to essentially eliminate public sector unions. I will be shocked if, as usual, the founders' eighteenth century economic thought and broad ideas are not easily converted by that march into a standard union-busting drumbeat from the days of the Pinkertons.

Uncomfortably for the Tea Partiers, when we examine the actual record of a key revolutionary icon, Thomas Paine, we find a man who himself was an agitator for justice and dignity for public workers. Paine's legacy for U.S. independence is of course vital; he famously wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which played a crucial part in moving many North American colonists firmly in support of independence and the construction of a democratic state. Paine, however, was not a long-time resident of the colonies - in fact he only moved to Philadelphia in 1774.

What was he doing before? Well, most immediately prior, he had worked as an Officer of Excise, a tax collector, in Lewes, England. That is until he joined a movement of fellow excise officers demanding that their wages be increased to allow these public servants to escape poverty. Throughout the winter of 1772-1773 Paine worked to organize and prepare a petition to Parliament, an attempt which failed. The following year Paine was fired from his job and would make his way to Philadelphia.

The main contribution Paine made to this effort was to write his first political pamphlet, The Case of the Officers of Excise. While many of the specifics in this piece are more relevant to the eighteenth century world, in it we can find some of the same principles at work in Wisconsin today:

On the problems of low wages:

When a Year’s Salary is mentioned in the Gross, it acquires a Degree of Consequence from its Sound, which it would not have if separated into daily Payments, and if the Charges attending the receiving and other unavoidable Expences were considered with it. Fifty Pounds a Year, and One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing a Day. carry as different Degrees of Significancy with them, as My Lord’s Steward, and the Steward’s Labourer; and yet an Out-Ride Officer in the Excise, under the Name of Fifty Pounds a Year, receives for himself no more than One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing a Day.

After Tax, Charity, and sitting Expences are deducted, there remains very little more than Forty-six pounds; and the expences of Horse-keeping in many Places cannot be brought under Fourteen Pounds a Year, besides the Purchase at first, and the Hazard of Life, which reduces it to Thirty-two Pounds per Annum, or One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing per Day.

On the questions of wealth and poverty:

The Rich, in Ease and Affluence, may think I have drawn an unnatural Portrait; but could they descend to the cold Regions of Want, the Circle of Polar Poverty, they would find their Opinions changing with the Climate. There are Habits of Thinking peculiar to different Conditions, and to find them out is truly to study Mankind.

The final call for justice:

With an Addition of Salary, the Excise would wear a new Aspect, and recover its former Constitution. Languor and Neglect would give Place to Care and Chearfulness. Men of Reputation and Abilities would seek after it, and finding a comfortable Maintenance, would stick to it. The unworthy and the incapable would be rejected; the Power of Superiors be re-established, and Laws and Instructions receive new Force.

Three Random Thoughts on D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza's cover article for Forbes (lovingly seconded by Newt Gingrich, who, on behalf of all people who have or are working to get U.S. history PhDs, I apologize for), so overflows with shoddy arguments that there's not really time to delve into all of them. A number of great writers have already done the job of skewering D'Souza's faulty logic and I especially recommend Adam Serwer's brilliant post on how the piece fits into larger conservative arguments. That said, I have three fairly unconnected thoughts:

1) Not An Original Smear: The notion that a U.S. president bases his allegiance to some foreign ideology is by no means a new one. In fact, a long history exists of political opponents attempting to link their opponents to some foreign (and radical) ideology, thus discrediting them completely. One of the first victims of such attacks was Thomas Jefferson, who, particularly in his 1800 campaign, came under constant attack by Federalists claiming his allegiance lay with the French Revolution, not the American. One such controversy involved a 1796 letter Jefferson wrote to Philip Mazzei, in which he expressed concerns over the political path the fledgling nation had embarked under Federalist rule. The Federalist press rushed to imply that Jefferson had abandoned his loyalty to the U.S., with one key Federalist newspaper, the New York Minerva, printing excerpts of the letter and commenting that, "it seems hardly possible an American could be capable of writing such a letter." Ironically, Jefferson's letter to Philip Mazzei itself indulged in the same type of rhetoric, arguing that Federalist policies had created "in place of that noble love of liberty and republican government which carried us triumphantly thro' the war, an Anglican, monarchical and aristocratical party had sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance as they have already done the forms of the British government." As one more example, some opponents of Abraham Lincoln viewed him as overly close with various European exiles in the U.S. who had been leaders in the famed 1848 revolutions in Europe, seeing their often strong abolitionist views as marking the entry of foreign notions into American politics.

2) Stop Pretending You Knew the Founders: In the piece D'Souza attempts to figure out "Obama's dream" and notes that "[it] is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a 'new order for the ages.'" As I wrote about before, the claim that one's own opinions truly reflect those of the "founding fathers" remains one of the most persistent and frustrating memes in modern uses of historical example. The founding generation had a great diversity of opinion about the "American dream" and what American identity meant. Certainly, a Hamilton and a Jefferson didn't agree about what form the U.S. economy should take. And the slaves who fought for the pro-independence side most likely viewed themselves as "American," even if most of the founders did not. The same goes for women who lobbied for (and in New Jersey briefly won) suffrage and other rights, but were denied an equal place in U.S. society.

D'Souza also revives a conservative attack on Obama which accuses him of denying the existence of "American exceptionalism," calling into question his motivations for being president. Taking a look at the full Obama quote, this is at best a gross oversimplification. And it certainly does not mark a rejection of the founders. Obama's view of American exceptionalism is that there are a number of laudable and unique characteristics about U.S. culture and history. That said, Obama did not claim the U.S. to be empirically "better," rather noting that other nations have their own exceptional characteristics, and that together a better world can be built. Such sentiments clearly echo certain strains of thought and values from the revolutionary generation, especially those expressed in word and deed by Thomas Paine, who saw the U.S. as exceptional, but believed much of what was best about the U.S. could be spread abroad through an international struggle for liberty.

3. Read Some African History: D'Souza's term "Kenyan anti-colonialism" is rather amusing in its ignorance of African history (and I'm no expert). I get that he's using this as short-hand to refer to the larger, post-colonial move by many African and Asian nations, reflected in the 1970s push for a New International Economic Order, which challenged global economic structures with a far-reaching program of reform. However, Kenya was never a major participant in those movements and its development strategy in the late 1960s and onwards focused on inviting in foreign investment, not internal, state-led development. You know, the kind of policies D'Souza favors.