Paine, the Neocon?

Irwin Spiegelman

[Reprinted from the Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, Vol.7, No.4, December, 2006]

This PADL[1] essay examines the review by conservative historian, Arthur Herman[2] appearing in the September 22, 2006 Wall Street Journal, page W4. It's title is, incredibly, The First Neoconservative. It is the purported review of Craig Nelson's, Thomas Paine and Harvey J. Kaye's, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.[3] Mr. Herman has more important "neocon"[4] fish to fry, so he makes short shrift of these two Paine books with the following:

Unfortunately, two new biographies of Paine devote scant time to his writings. Craig Nelson offers a "life and times"-style biographical narrative. Harvey Kaye gives us a rambling essay whose title, although referring to "the promise of America," should be "Changing Views of Tom Paine in American History." Neither book digs very deep or offers much more than historical filler. Yet both of these biographies have value, forcing us to confront Paine's place in the American intellectual tradition.

Despite Arthur Herman's disregard for what Paine actually wrote and his desire to fit Paine's views with his own extreme right-wing agenda, he has fashioned two pithy statements about Paine's legacy which are well worth quoting:

He [Paine] was, after all, the author of a single great idea: that ordinary people know how to shape the future of society better than their social and intellectual superiors. Of ail the Founding Fathers, Tom Paine was the most consistent populist; he believed in progress. To Paine, the supreme benchmark of human progress was the growth of equal rights for individuals.

Like Common Sense, the pamphlets [The American Crisis] taught Americans that they were fighting for something more than the traditional rights of freeborn Englishmen." The goal was to sweep away the whole rotten facade of hereditary kings and aristocrats, a corrupt state church that taxed believers and unbelievers alike, and a social system built on privilege and oppression. In its place Americans would build a better society, one based on the universal rights of man, which offered every person a chance to lead a productive, happy and decent life.

Paine as "America's Founding Neoconservative"

Let's explore the upside-down world of Arthur Herman, as he rides roughshod over the facts in order to satisfy his ideological bent. He writes:

Progressive radicals -- including Mr. Kaye -- embrace him as kindred spirit, but only by ignoring Paine's view on the right to property, which he saw as crucial to a free society.

But the right to property is a basic tenet of the Human Rights agenda, enthusiastically supported by liberals and conservatives and even progressive radicals. Mr. Herman has it all wrong and it gets worse as he continues:

Paine's populism rested on a keen belief in the creative power of capitalism and the universal appeal of what we call the American Dream. You could call him, America's founding neoconservative.

As we know, Paine went well beyond Adam Smith's capitalism and gave us an early version of the "welfare state," a democratic society, based on adherence to full human rights for all its members. Mr. Herman is wrong again in dubbing Paine a "neocon" for two cogent reasons. The first is that the advocacy of the right to property and strong faith in capitalism are not the hallmarks of Neoconservatism.[5] It is the aggressive, militaristic foreign policy, which is the neocons' sine qua non!

The second is that Paine was a ferocious opponent of imperialism and aggressive wars and an advocate of an organization of nations to prevent war and severely reduce armaments (Rights of Man, Maritime Compact, among many). Paine would obviously be a leader in the struggle to defeat the "neocons" and their policies. Much more of Mr. Herman's dark and deadly fantasy world is revealed in his final paragraph:

...it is more than possible that Paine would have supported our current war in Iraq. Paine understood that preserving liberty sometimes means enduring the cost of war.

To the contrary, Mr. Herman! Paine would be in the thick of the anti-Iraq war effort. He would see that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was about seizing control of the lion's share of Iraqi oil profits for American oil giants, like ExxonMobil, done under the guise of spreading democracy and neo-liberal, corporate-dominated free markets throughout the Middle East. And how does the Iraq war preserve our liberty?

Here is Mr. Herman's ultimate insult to the spirit of Paine: Paine the free thinker would instantly have seen in the Iranian mullah s... the kind of narrow-minded clerical tyranny that has to be destroyed if humanity is going to move forward.[6]

Finally, in brief, what are the intellectual forces in motion today which truly reflect Paine's values on international affairs? The list begins with the anti-corporate crusade of Ralph Nader; Noam Chomsky's revisionist history of post world-war II events, showing the US so often deterring democracy; John Perkin's revelations concerning World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans to the Third World in his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2006, New York: Plume/Penguin); and Chalmers Johnson's books, as well as his recent article, Republic or Empire, in Harper's Magazine, January 2007.

The central fact of our times is that transnational corporations and the wealthiest investors, not nation-states or their citizens, are the true global powers. They have replaced the monarchies and aristocracies of the ancien regime that Paine fought so valiantly. Any alternative American foreign policy must begin with the truth that irresponsible corporate power must be challenged and brought under democratic control and the rule of universal human rights.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. PADL stands for the Paine Anti-Defamation League. It seeks to expose and correct defaming and demeaning comments against Paine by those who should know better and to applaud instances in which Paine is given his due. Timothy Nelms, TPF Board member, brought the Arthur Herman review to our attention.
   
2. See Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) for brief biography, also "Google" Arthur Herman, to learn of bis recent "neocon" exploits. He is author of four books, including Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator, The Free Press, 1997 and most recently To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modem World, Harper Collins, 2004. Mr. Herman is the coordinator of the Smithsonian Western Heritage Program and an adjunct professor at George Mason University.
   
3. Craig Nelson's, Thomas Paine, was reviewed in the Bulletin (October 2006, vol. 7, no. 3) and Harvey J. Kaye's, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, was reviewed in the October 2005 issue (vol. 6, no. 3).
   
4. "Neocon," the popular term, is used in place of "neoconservative." Wikipedia was helpful in explaining the origin of the term.
   
5. Look at the "neoconservative" entry in Wikipedia. The hallmark is their aggressive foreign policy, not then-economic policies, or enthusiasm for capitalism. Wikipedia interprets Irving Kristol, neoconservatism's founder, as follows: "Patriotism is a necessity, world government [insert: UN] is a terrible idea, the ability to distinguish friend from foe, protecting national interest [insert: multinational corporations and America's wealthiest investors] both at home and abroad, and the necessity of a strong [insert excessively strong] military" [insert: bringing America to the brink of bankruptcy and insecurity]. Inserts are compliments of Irwin Spiegelman.
   
6. Getting Serious About Iran: A Military Option, in Commentary, November 2006, shows Mr. Herman is still a "neocon" true-believer. He is not for bombing Iran to halt its development of nuclear weapons, but instead argues for our military to seize the Straits of Hormuz, allow free tanker access to the region's oil for all nations, "save" Iran, and to take over Iranian oil terminals and off-shore oil production. According to this crack-brained scheme, Iran, starved for oil revenues, will see a regime change and Iran,, in Mr. Herman's fevered mind, will be unable to retaliate!