Back in my hay day they called me "Old Common Sense" after the snappy little pamphlet I wrote to jump start the American Revolution. That's what got me into the club of American founders - that and The Crisis. Oh yeah, that was great stuff! General Washington liked my first Crisis so much he had it read aloud to all the troops at Valley Forge. "These are the times that try men's souls", - that's a nice turn of a phrase if I do say so myself. And I proved that I was no summer soldier - I was right there with the troops during that terrible winter. That's back when the General was my friend; back before political expediency made him turn his back on me. You see, I was the black sheep of the founding fathers because I wouldn't leave well enough alone. After the American Revolution was won, it was on back to England for me where I wrote and published The Rights of Man in answer to that old stuffed shirt Edmund Burke's book Reflections of the French Revolution. My pal William Blake suggested that I make myself scarce before it was published, so I took off for France, and a good thing too - the Brits were so incensed by it that they put me on trial in absentia for seditious libel. In France, democracy was on the march, and I joined their revolution as well. When that turned ugly, and that bloody bastard Robespierre had me imprisoned and tried to take my head off I made a claim of American citizenship, but the American ambassador, Gouverneur Morris, (blast his beedy little eyes!) would not acknowledge it. By that time, the radicalism of the American Revolution had already bowed down to more conservative interests, and an old radical like me was considered an embarrassment. Even Washington, my old friend, would have nothing to do with me. I only escaped from that one by blind bloody luck, no thanks at all to my old compatriots in America. Then of course, I wrote The Age of Reason, that messed with everyone's sacred cow, religion. (Never discuss politics or religion, they say, but what else is worth the breath?) By the time I got back to America, my old friends would have nothing to do with me and the short memoried American public cursed my name as a spawn of Satan. I died old, bitter and alone, but kept my pride and integrity till the end - I spit in the face of the sniveling minister who came thinking he could wring a death bed conversion from me. The best any of the papers would say about me when I died was that, "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Those ungrateful bastards had forgotten "Old Common Sense". After I died, no church would bury me, and my body was planted in the back yard of my farm - but even in death, I had no peace. Some genius dug up my bones to give me a more suitable burial, but then never got around to the reburying part. My bones were lost, and you should hear some of the stories about what has happened to them since. As for me, the ghost of old Tom Paine; I'll always be around, where ever men are in bondage and tyranny reigns, where ever honest republican government is threatened, Tom Paine's ghost will be there to spit in the eyes of the oppressors. See you around the revolution!
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