I am currently reading Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. Since his Common Sense was critical to the American Revolution, he was someone I thought I admired. Rights of Man, though, is an answer to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. I got a little box on the left hand side that says Edmund Burke is my hero. I picked up Thomas Paine last summer and didn’t get around to reading it until now, which was before I discovered Edmund Burke.

I think it’s important to read people you disagree with, so you can widen your horizons. And every once in a while, they actually have a good idea. This book is getting the gears turning in my mind, and is leading to many thoughts that will end up in my discourse I’m working on. (Most of which will be in contradiction to Paine’s principles, I think.)

From the back cover, this also got me riled up: “Thomas Paine was the first international revolutionary… He generated one of the first blueprints for a welfare state, combining a liberal order of civil rights with egalitarian constraints.” International revolutionary? Welfare state? Blech.