Dit jaar is de tweehonderdste sterfday van Thomas Paine, schrijver van het pamflet Common Sense dat zo’n grote rol speelde in de aanloop naar de Amerikaanse Revolutie. Paine zat was een van de meest radicale voorstanders van de onafhankelijkheid van de koloniën van het Britse rijk. Je kunt je afvragen wat een man die eens schreef ‘Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person.  My country is the world, and my religion is to do good’  nu zou vinden van het land waar hij zo van hield en dat mede door zijn agitatie gevormd kon worden. Peter Linebaugh, ook schrijver van het prachtige The Many Headed Hydra, over het opstandige transatlantische proletariaat van die tijd, schreef dit artikel in Counterpunch.

“To World Revolution”
By PETER LINEBAUGH

President Obama quoted Tom Paine in the conclusion to his inaugural address last week, but did not name him.
After Obama named the values (honesty, hard work, courage, fair play, tolerance, loyalty, and patriotism), after he urged us to our duties and responsibilities, and to be ready to pay the price of citizenship, after invoking God, and stating that these values comprised our liberty and creed, he asked us to remember America’s birth (an odd name for independence or revolution when you think about it).

Obama set the scene on Christmas Day, for believers a birthday of a savior.  But let us set aside these undertones, and get to the main story:  Xmas, 1776, and George Washington’s storied crossing of the Delaware river.  It is the subject of the 1850 painting by Emmanuel Leutze, a German ‘48er, who made sure to include an African American and a woman in the crew of the boat named ‘Revolution.’ The Delaware separates New Jersey from Pennsylvania. In New Jersey British troops of George III, King of England, were marching swiftly after the multiple defeats, a rout really, in New York.  In Pennsylvania the American troops were encamped – cold, sick, hungry, their enlistment tours almost up, demoralized, defeated, and wanting to go home.   These were the original ‘winter soldiers’ after whom were named the brave Viet vets who denounced U.S. war crimes in 1971 Detroit.
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Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine