As I’m studying fiddle, I’m also learning a lot of history – and among other things, I’m running into Thomas Paine. There’s something kind of awesome about a person who writes a song to justify the French revolution. And it’s still being played (in circles) 275 years later.
He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793–94), his book that advocates deism, promotes reason and freethinking, and argues against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.
In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity