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You guys should have listened to Thomas Paine, the only founding father with a clue and a set of principles.
Topical.
Why, what did he say?
- political institutions should promotoe individual rights and social equality
- critqued organized religion
- the government should serve the people
- wrote the famous line "These are the times that try men's souls" during civil war
- people have the inherit right to reform and/or dismantle oppresive goverments
- all individuals possess inalienable rights (human rights basically)
That's what I gather from his wiki and some chatgpt queries. Never heard of him before (not an american) but honestly — I'm a big fan now.
Sounds nice enough, but not really like an outsider position among the Founding Fathers. OP seemed to be saying that Paine differed substantially from the others in some way, which I would be interested to learn about (not American either, I only have cursory knowledge of the Founding Fathers).
Paine was far more radical than the rest of them, and wrote scathing critiques of them that caused him to become extremely unpopular before he died.
Didn't all the founding fathers and every president since then say all of the above?
We need to praise people more by what they do, than what they say I reckon