For too long we have allowed the right to appropriate the nation’s history, define what it means to be an American, and corral American political imagination. It is time for liberals and radicals to recover their fundamental principles and perspectives and reinvigorate Americans’ democratic impulses and aspirations. And we must start by reclaiming, and reconnecting with, the memory and legacy of Thomas Paine and the progressive tradition he inspired and encouraged. Doing so will remind us of not only what we stand in opposition to, but, all the more, what we stand in opposition for…The Wikipedia biography of Thomas Paine shows him to be a strange choice for the left's mascot. He was born and raised in England. He moved the the United States (he was the first one to suggest the name) just before the revolution and he moved back to England soon after the Revolutionary War ended.
He moved to France to avoid arrest for his book Rights of Man and was an apologist for the French Revolution. He could not stomach the terror and was imprisoned. He was supposed to be executed but the jailer made a clerical error when marking his door and he survived. He eventually moved to New York in 1802 where he died in 1809.
Paine was not so much in favor of separating church and state - he simply hated organized religion and considered Christianity to be a total fabrication. Instead he was a committed deist.
A number of his ideas were ahead of their time. He was against slavery and for minimum wage and redistribution of wealth.
Come to think of it - a European who is afraid of religion and wants to redistribute wealth... maybe he is a good mascot for the Democrats.
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