Thomas Paine's Rights of Man - Christopher Hitchens

Thomas Paine was arguably the greatest, and most shamefully neglected, political thinker of all time.

I have to confess that I hadn't even heard of him until I heard a lecture by the comedian Mark Steele. I listened with a growing sense of astonishment that such an important philosopher should have completely passed me by in my education and subsequent reading. Tom Paine was involved in two revolutions, proposed radical systems of human rights and social welfare, decried slavery, railed against the establishment and the church, wrote the best selling books of the day for little return, was reviled and praised in equal measure and was nearly executed but for a twist of fate. Oh, and he was also caught up in a hare brained scheme to build an iron bridge in a field but that's another story.

Christopher Hitchens has written a brief but meticulous book that gives the historical context for Paine's life and works, his experiences in America and France, and outlines the important themes of 'Common Sense', 'The Rights of Man' and 'The Age of Reason'. He also goes into some depth about the rivalry between Paine and Edmund Burke which gives a flavour of the sort of political debate that was happening at the time.

For me, Paine's most influential work was 'The Age of Reason' in which he rips the bible to shreds in a comprehensive and unanswerable fashion, although that hasn't stopped some from trying. In answer to Paine's assertion that Moses' command to slaughter the Midianites in Numbers 31 was an order to "butcher the boys, massacre the mothers and debauch the daughters" the Bishop of Llandaff argued that the daughters had merely been sold into slavery and that no hint of immorality was involved. So that's all right then.

This book is an excellent introduction to the works of Thomas Paine, particularly to 'The Rights of Man'.