Tom Paine and Presidents’ Day
by Ted Glick
The organizers of the pro-democracy actions last week on February 5, all around the country in all 50 states, have issued a call for actions this coming Monday, February 17, President’s Day. This day is mainly about remembering the USA’s first President, George Washington, as well as Abraham Lincoln. Washington was a slaveholder; Lincoln, of course, defeated, temporarily, the system of African enslavement in the South.
By coincidence this morning I was reminded about one of the original American revolutionaries who fought with Washington for independence from England, Tom Paine. It might be of value for those organizing the Monday actions to reference what he had to say in his book, Common Sense, about kings, or Presidents who act like kings:
“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any.” p. 15, Dover Thrift Editions
Washington and Paine were both supporters of slavery. They also supported wars against Indigenous people to take their land for the benefit of European settlers. They personify this contradiction at the heart of the United States: a very imperfect union, at birth, but one which, over time, with Lincoln playing an important role, rejected much of that racist past and began the expansion of democratic rights and freedoms which have continued up until the 21st century.
Trump and MAGA want to role back as many of those rights as they can.
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Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.