Illustrations by Kris Chau

Bring the Paine!

Screw fat old Ben Franklin and his 300th birthday. This city should be celebrating a real revolutionary, the man without whom there'd be no America.

by Steven Wells

The madness has been going on for months already, since the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation first started shilling Franklin's 300th-birthday festivities last year.

The greatest event in this nation's history has been reduced to a yearlong birthday party for a jolly, jocular cartoon Unka Ben. A kinda insurrectionary Kris Kringle. An avuncular saint, inventor and bootstrap capitalist-a PG-friendly, George Bush-approved, sanitized, shrink-wrapped, deboned and prechewed establishment revolutionary for the whole family to enjoy.

We say bollocks to that. It's time for some Common Sense. It's time this city celebrated working-class Philadelphia's real revolutionary hero.

Thomas Paine was a founder of both the U.S.A. and the French Republic, the ideological father of democracy, the coiner of the phrase "United States of America," the author of not one but two pamphlets that saved the United States, probably the original author of the Declaration of Independence and-on top of that-he was the original zinester, the first blogger and (according to Wired magazine) the moral father of the Internet.

Paine was Philadelphia's first and greatest hero. Rocky in a periwig. His life was a swashbuckling Hollywood epic that makes Pirates of the Caribbean look like On Golden Pond on Valium. As a teenager Paine narrowly avoided sailing on a ship called Terrible with a Capt. William Death, who was promptly slaughtered along with 150 of his crew. He did, however, serve on a privateer (a state-sanctioned pirate ship) called (you won't believe this) The King of Prussia.

In 1781-after he, according to George Washington, twice singlehandedly saved the American revolution-Paine even had an Errol Flynn-style sword duel with a British naval captain. Later, when he was imprisoned during the French revolution, he escaped the guillotine only because an X was scrawled on the wrong side of his death-cell door.

It's Paine we should be celebrating when we name our schools, bridges and roads. Benjamin Franklin might have invented the lightning rod and the frigging glass armonica, but Tom Paine invented democracy.

It's no contest. Without Tom Paine there would've been no American revolution-and no America. Yet there are only five statues of Paine in the entire world-and not one of them is in Philadelphia. And that is nothing short of a disgrace.

Thomas Paine arrived in Philadelphia on Oct. 30, 1744, sick to his guts with typhoid. He had a letter of introduction from Franklin, which he used to blag himself a job at the Colonial equivalent of PW.

America thrilled and shocked him. He saw artisan militiamen form themselves into a revolutionary "committee of privates." And he could see the slave market from the window of his lodgings. The freshness and potential of America blew his mind, and the rebellion against the British fired him up to write a pamphlet that would change the world.

The rebellion was led by the rich, many of them slave owners. They dismissed the lower orders as "the grazing multitude" (Washington), "the common herd" (John Adams) and "poor reptiles" (Gouverneur Morris). And they clung to Britannia's skirts like frightened children.

"Washington is still in his battle tent, toasting George III. What? Is he out of his fucking mind?" laughs Harvey J. Kaye, author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. "So what were they fighting for, these gentlemen? If they weren't fighting for democracy? They were fighting for their rights as gentlemen to be recognized by the British crown."

The working-class Paine changed all that. He turned their gentrified rebellion into a people's war for democracy. In 1776 Paine wrote what would become the American manifesto of the revolution.

Common Sense-a demolition job on the very concept of monarchy-swept America like an ideological firestorm. The impact was phenomenal. It sold 600,000 copies among a population of 3 million. And like Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation" 87 years later (Lincoln was a massive Paine fan), it turned a civil war into a righteous struggle for human freedom.

Without Tom Paine there would've been no revolution-and no America.

I'm standing on the corner of Front and Market streets. Rain batters the flapping Ben Franklin birthday banners. A historical marker says this was the site of the London Coffee House, where Philadelphians auctioned "black slaves recently arrived from Africa."

Tom Paine's lodgings were around here someplace. Nowhere important. Just the place the most influential piece of writing in the history of the United States was composed.

Nothing worth a historical marker. Not like around the corner, where you'll find, carefully preserved, the remains of Benjamin Franklin's privy. God help us if we should forget to sanctify the place where Unka Ben shat.

It's Jan. 29, Tom Paine's birthday. Today there are Paine parties in England, New York, New Jersey, California and Florida. And in Philadelphia? Nothing. No roses, no fireworks. Just dudes in transparent-plastic-covered state trooper hats, keeping half an eye on the smattering of hardy tourists wrapped in brightly colored Gore-Tex who, hunched over against the rain, walk from Paine-free attraction to Paine-free attraction.

The Parks official behind the desk at the Independence Visitor Center is nonplussed. Birthday celebrations? None that he knows of. Anything in the displays about Tom Paine? Or Common Sense? Not really. "Nothing big."

Can he direct me to Tom Paine Plaza? He has to look it up in the phone book.

"It's near the statue of Mayor Rizzo," he says. "You'll see it. He's got his hand up, kinda like this, like he's seig heiling. Which is kind of ironic if you know anything about Mayor Rizzo."

Turns out the Rizzo statue is down the road a way. On Thomas Paine Plaza itself, there's a statue of ... Benjamin bloody Franklin!

There are hordes of rotund, bifocaled, frock-coated Ben Franklin impersonators currently working in Philadelphia, led by the brilliant Ralph Archbold, who plays Franklin as a cross between Saturday Night Live's Ladies' Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

The real Franklin was much nastier. Ben spent most of his political career as an ardent monarchist and convinced imperialist. He wasn't above using ethnic slurs. He profited from and apologized for slavery.

"But for all that, Franklin was more universal and egalitarian than most of the founding fathers," says David Waldstreicher, history professor at Temple University and author of the Franklin biography Runaway America. "But he doesn't stand comparison to Paine. The only, the only thing you could possibly criticize Paine for was that he was a good hater. And it's difficult to do that when you look at what he hated.

"I'm all for celebrating Paine. In fact, I'd rather we celebrated Paine. Franklin spends a lot of his time elsewhere. Philadelphia's not big enough for him, so for 25 years he left it-and he didn't want to come back. But Paine, unlike Franklin, spends the crucial years of the revolution here. He's here when things happen. He's right here when things turn really radical.

"Paine is much, much more revolutionary than Franklin. That's why some historians see the revolution as a middle-class revolution-which gave us rights-but a revolution with limits. But we need to look at who wasn't getting their rights. We need to think about slavery."

But that's not the history we're being taught this tercentennial year. We're told America's rebels were conservative revolutionaries, guys fighting for real American values. The values of Disney, Wal-Mart and Nike. And it's been incredibly easy to hammer Franklin into that hole. Ditto most of the other founding fathers.

None of these guys was that radical. Heck, some of them even owned slaves. But that's okay. Because you can't judge the founding fathers by the standards of 21st-century liberal PC America.

Or maybe you can.

Because then there's Paine. Thrice-damned Paine. The radical, shit-stirring, rabble-rousing, antiracist, internationalist, pro-women, pro-working class, antiprivilege, antityrannical, super-democratic throbbing heart and soul of the American revolution. A man who, if he were alive today, would have an FBI/Homeland Security file as thick as the Hulk's thigh. Hell, they'd probably deport his commie ass back to England.

The trouble with Paine is that he makes the rest of the founding fathers look bad. He makes all the excuses made on their behalf about slavery and elitism and snobbery and sexism look halfassed. And although modern Tories of all stripes-from Reaganite Republicans to wild-eyed right-wing libertarians-have claimed Paine as their own, in the end Paine is the American revolutionary who can't be defanged, forced into a business suit, swathed in a flag, shrink-wrapped and sold to the masses as a Stepford revolutionary.

Because Paine didn't stop with Common Sense. He wasn't just a revolutionary democrat. He was a witty and eloquent critic of all forms of oppression. He raged against slavery, poverty and female subordination. And he mercilessly dissected and mocked the absurdities of religion.

In short, the guy fucking rocked.

And for this he was never forgiven. He died poor and alone, his reputation destroyed by the slanders of reactionaries and religious bigots (who even accused him of raping his cat).

Conservatives downplay Paine's role in the creation of the U.S.A. for the same reasons they prefer to disguise the revolution as a "war of independence." And I guess for the same reasons official Philadelphia is going all gooey over Unka Ben but totally ignores his way more radical protege, Paine reminds us the revolution was fought and won by ordinary Americans.

His writings remind us that economic, racial and sexual oppression in all their forms are incompatible with true democracy, that a death penalty applied almost exclusively to the poor is an abomination, that right-wing Christianity is an absurd oxymoron, and that any society that tolerates poverty is fundamentally sick and in desperate need of radical change.

Jan. 25, I phone Cara Schneider at the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation to ask about any upcoming events celebrating Tom Paine's birthday.

"Well, I'll be reading Common Sense and sipping Johnny Walker with a friend, but apart from that, nah, not a stitch!"

Last year Alaine Lowell of the Pasadena, Calif.-based Thomas Paine Society visited Philadelphia in search of her hero-and was horrified to discover just how effectively we've airburshed him out of our history in favor of his fatter and more conservative friend. "We've got buses coming, packed with kids from all over America, to learn about the revolution, and yet we've got almost no mention of the man who was so instrumental to it, who was at its center. And you've got to ask yourself, if that's the case, are we even telling them the truth?"

George Holtz, a Philly expat who moved to Pasadena, died in 2001, leaving the Thomas Paine Society a legacy to build a Paine museum in Philadelphia. If past events are anything to go by, they're facing an uphill task.

Paine has been at the center of a centuries-long culture war in Philadelphia. On one side have been the Painites-liberals, socialists, suffragists, labor unionists, antiracists, freethinkers, atheists and Walt Whitman. On the other, a mostly faceless ragbag of bureaucrats, reactionaries, right-wingers, jobsworths and religious bigots determined to prevent Philadelphia from raising any monument to the greatest Philadelphian.

In the 1940s the Fairmount Park Commission blocked a Paine statue that, it was felt, might possibly offend the sensibilities of passing Christians. No one was surprised. For decades there was a ding-dong battle fought over the bust of Paine in Independence Hall. The bigots won and-after languishing for years in the Hall's basement-the bust now resides in the librarian's office at the American Philosophical Society (which is also home to a large collection of Paine's papers).

Thomas Paine Cronin is president of District Council 47 of the government workers' union AFSCME. As a teenage Philadelphia boxer, he once sparred with the young Joe Frazier.

He's spent his entire adult life living up to the radical standards set by his namesake.

In the '60s and '70s he was a civil rights organizer and anti-Vietnam War activist. In the '80s he fought against poverty and apartheid. Today he campaigns against another stupid and futile war.

Sharing Paine's name has been a mixed experience.

"Some people get frightened. No, really. Usually when I get called for jury duty, they hear the name and I get dismissed immediately. They assume I'm sort of radical-and they're right."

So far Cronin hasn't been invited to any of the Benjamin Franklin birthday events. "I'm not exactly A-list," he laughs. "I'm more S-list."

"I understand why Paine's not here in Philadelphia," says Cronin. "It's clear to me the fear that someone like Paine would inspire in bigots and morons. There's been a conscious attempt to write Paine out of the American revolution because of his political and religious ideas. I think they're too advanced for the powers that be. He was way ahead of his time. I mean Paine was the first one to use the term 'United States of America.' Paine has even been credited with being the real author of the Declaration of Independence-not the watered-down version that exists now. Paine's declaration had prohibitions against slavery, had universal suffrage. Women had the right to vote. He spoke about a united nations. I mean he was light years ahead of even most people today.

"I think Bush's America would make Paine roll over in his grave like a rotisserie," Cronin continues. "Bush is the antithesis of Paine. I don't think Paine would've been happy with us going into Iraq based on lies and deception.

"If you really talked about what Thomas Paine really talked about, you'd have a different country."

Paine's big mistake-the reason why it's Unka Ben's name plastered all over Philly and not his-was that he didn't know when to keep his goddamn mouth shut.

For starters, Common Sense scared the crap out of some of the founding fathers.

"Masters, bosses-they always fear that their slaves or workers are going to rebel. That's a given," points out the author Harvey J. Kaye. "And when you start throwing a word like 'revolution' into the mix, you're going to scare people."

John Adams was Paine's most savage critic among the conservative founding fathers. He was horrified by Common Sense, calling it "crapulous." Worse than that, said Adams, the bloody thing was stirring up the servants and slaves and-horror of horrors-had even turned his wife Abigail into a feminist.

The revolution was over, but Paine just wouldn't shut the fuck up. He attacked slavery (again). He proposed that landowners be taxed to compensate the poor. He defended the little guy against the big guy at every turn. And then-to top it all off-Paine brilliantly demolished the world's three leading monotheistic religions in The Age of Reason.

Lots of the other founding fathers were deists (they believed in an abstract God but thought religion was bollocks), but only Paine was stupid or brave enough to proclaim it. This totally fucked with the heads of American conservatives. And it's been fucking with their heads ever since.

When Paine died (besieged by godbotherers beseeching him to repent his "atheism"), religious bigots threw rocks at and kicked over his tombstone. And they've been spitting on his grave ever since.

Some Philadel-phians have been fighting for the city to recognize Paine for years. Retired schoolteacher Mark Stone has blitzed all and sundry with beautifully written letters. And troublemaker antidiscrimination activist, militant atheist and fervent Painite Margaret Downey-of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, the Anti-Discrimination Support Network, the atheist Scouting for All pressure group and the Thomas Paine Memorial Committee-has taken her Paine loving to the highest levels of state and city government.

She's met with limited success. She managed to persuade Philadelphia City Council to declare June 8 Thomas Paine Day, but her bid to have a statue of Paine erected in Thomas Paine Plaza was dismissed out of hand. After all, it's not as if we need even one bloody statue of the most important, influential and righteous Philadelphian who ever lived, is it now? Not when we've already got a statue of Rocky.

Alas, a lot of the most indefatigable Philadelphia Painites are now knocking on a bit, says Downey. And she herself tends to take a bit of a back seat these days. Especially when it comes to pushing Paine projects to the high and mighty.

"Because now I'm the woman who tried to get the Ten Commandments removed from the Chester County Courthouse and who sued the Boy Scouts. Those guys want to get over it."

Okay. One question. If this city can find the space for statues of a fictional boxer; a racist mayor; a delusional Frenchwoman; a bunch of ball players; a generic "signer" of the Declaration of Independence; a Frenchman, a Pole and a German (all of whom fought with the Americans in the revolution); a 26-ton facing-the-wrong-way Billy Penn; and a giant clothespin, why can't it find the space for a single statue of Tom Paine?

"For generations people said it was Paine's deism that caused his unpopularity," says Harvey J. Kaye. "But I think it's that for all these years Paine has stood as a testament to America's potential, to what America could be. And that's always been so much better than the America that has actually existed."

"We need Thomas Paine," says the Thomas Paine Society's Alaine Lowell. "We don't have enough real heroes."

It's time Philadelphia gave Thomas Paine his due.

Steven Wells (swells@philadelphiaweekly.com) writes the On the Radar column.