''An Argument to Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in England May, as Things Now Stand Today, be Attended with Some Inconveniences, and Perhaps not Produce Those Many Good Effects Proposed Thereby'', commonly referred to as ''An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity'', is an essay by Jonathan Swift defending Christianity, and in particular, Anglicanism, against contemporary assaults by its various opponents, including freethinkers, Deists, Antitrinitarians, Atheists, Socinians, and other so-called "Dissenters." The essay was written in 1708 and, as was common at the time, was distributed widely as a pamphlet. The essay is well known for its sophisticated, multi-layered irony, and is widely regarded as one of the prime examples of political satire.

Overview

In the essay, Swift answers several real and rhetorical arguments against Christianity. First, he responds to the argument that the abolition of Christianity would expand the liberty of conscience by arguing that if great wits could not denounce the Church, they might instead turn to the denunciation of the government, causing political unrest. Swift then addresses the argument that the Church, then supported by government funds, was a drain on resources that might be better spent elsewhere. Swift responds that if the funds used to support the clergy were used instead to fund freethinking young gentlemen, the money would, in short time, be squandered away on vices, and divided by disagreeable marriages. Next, Swift counters the argument that the abolition of Christianity would open up another day of the week (the Sabbath) to commercial activities for the benefit of the nation by arguing that the Sabbath provides benefits by allowing lawyers time to write their briefs, merchants to tally their books, and others to exercise, go to coffeehouses, and otherwise enjoy themselves, (ironically implying that the argument is specious because the Sabbath was not kept as intended in any case). Swift then counters the argument that abolishing Christianity would remove arbitrary sectarian distinctions between Whig and Tory, High Church and Low Church, etc. that arguably damaged civil discourse and politics, by arguing that Christianity merely stands in as a convenient and arbitrary source of such distinctions and that abolishing it would only allow other equally arbitrary distinctions, essentially arguing that the problem is merely semantic and that such distinctions are a part of human nature.

The irony becomes more explicit as Swift next addresses the argument that it is ridiculous to employ a class of people to wail on one day a week against behavior that is the constant practice of all men alive on the other six by arguing that such vices, including wine and fine silks, were made all the more pleasurable by virtue of their being forbidden by the Christian mores of the era. In response to the facetious rhetorical argument that the abolition of Christianity would lead to the abolition of all religion, and with it such "grievous prejudices of education" as virtue, honor, conscience and justice, Swift argues that such concepts had already been banished from contemporary education, and that this argument was, therefore, moot. Answering the argument that the abolition of the gospel would benefit the vulgar, and that religion was put in force to keep the "lower part of the world in awe by fear of invisible powers," Swift points out that the vast majority of people were already unbelievers who only employed religion to quiet "peevish" children and provide topics for amusing discussion. Swift addresses the argument that abolishing Christianity will contribute to the uniting of a people divided by various sects of Protestantism by arguing that humanity has an inborn "spirit of opposition" such that if Christianity were not extant to provide a context for such natural oppositions among men, this natural tendency would instead be spent in contravention of the laws and disturbance of the public peace.

Finally, Swift points out potential negative consequences to the abolition of Christianity. First, Swift points out that reformers do not appreciate the advantage to them of having such an easy target upon which to practice their criticism and wit with such little risk to their persons in response as the Church and clergy; and rhetorically asks what institution could adequately replace religion in this role. Next, Swift warns that the abolition of Christianity (specifically the Anglican church) could lead to a rise in Presbyterianism, or worse in his mind, Catholicism. Swift's ironic defense of Christianity becomes more earnest and apparent as he finally proposes that if Christianity were to be abolished, all religion should be so banned, so as to fully free men from all bounds on their thinking and behavior, in order that they may be allowed to freely engage in such vices as prostitution and drunkenness. In conclusion, Swift proposes that if Christianity is to be abolished, it ought not be done until the conclusion of wars in which England was then involved, as many of the country's allies were devoutly Christian, or at least, in the case of Turkey, religious. In a final ironic flourish, Swift warns that if Christianity were abolished, the stock market would fall, costing Great Britain more than the country had ever spent for Christianity's preservation, and that there would be no reason to lose that much money merely for the sake of destroying the faith.

References

External links

An Argument against Abolishing Christianity

Category:Essays by Jonathan Swift Category:Satirical works Category:Pamphlets Category:1708 works Category:18th-century Christian texts

Coordinates	52°24′″N16°55′″N
name	Pat Robertson
birth name	Marion Gordon Robertson
birth date	March 22, 1930
birth place	Lexington, Virginia, United States
occupation	Televangelist
spouse	Adelia Elmer
children	Timothy Bryan Robertson Elizabeth Faith Robertson Gordon Perry Robertson Anne Carter Robertson
parents	Absalom Willis Robertson Gladys Churchill }}

Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (born March 22, 1930) is a media mogul, television evangelist, ex-Baptist minister and businessman who is politically aligned with the Christian Right in the United States.

He is the founder of numerous organizations and corporations, including the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Christian Coalition, Flying Hospital, International Family Entertainment Inc., Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, CBN Asia and Regent University. He is the host of ''The 700 Club,'' a Christian TV program airing on channels throughout the United States and on CBN network affiliates worldwide.

The son of U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, Robertson is a Southern Baptist and was active as an ordained minister with that denomination for many years, but holds to a charismatic theology not traditionally common among Southern Baptists. He unsuccessfully campaigned to become the Republican Party's nominee in the 1988 presidential election. As a result of his seeking political office, he no longer serves in an official role for any church. His media and financial resources make him a recognized, influential, and controversial public voice for conservative Christianity in the United States.

Life and career

Family

Robertson was born in Lexington, Virginia, into a prominent political family. His parents were Absalom Willis Robertson, a conservative Democratic United States Senator, and his wife Gladys Churchill (née Willis). He married Adelia "Dede" Elmer on August 26, 1954. His family includes four children, among them Gordon P. Robertson and Tim Robertson and, as of mid-2005, 14 grandchildren.

At a young age, Robertson was nicknamed ''Pat'' by his six-year-old brother, Willis Robertson, Jr., who enjoyed patting him on the cheeks when he was a baby while saying "pat, pat, pat". As he got older, Robertson thought about which first name he would like people to use. He considered "Marion" to be effeminate, and "M. Gordon" to be affected, so he opted for his childhood nickname "Pat". His strong awareness for the importance of names in the creation of a public image showed itself again during his presidential run when he threatened to sue NBC news for calling him a "television evangelist", which later became "televangelist", at a time when Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were objects of scandal.

Education and military service

When he was eleven, Robertson was enrolled in the preparatory McDonogh School outside Baltimore, Maryland. From 1940 until 1946 he attended The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He graduated with honors and enrolled at Washington and Lee University, where he majored in history. The claim that he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa is not substantiated by the Phi Beta Kappa membership directory. He also joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Robertson has said, "Although I worked hard at my studies, my real major centered around lovely young ladies who attended the nearby girls schools."

In 1948, the draft was reinstated and Robertson was given the option of joining the Marine Corps or being drafted into the army; he opted for the first.

In his words, "We did long, grueling marches to toughen the men, plus refresher training in firearms and bayonet combat." In the same year, he transferred to Korea, "I ended up at the headquarters command of the First Marine Division," says Robertson. "The Division was in combat in the hot and dusty, then bitterly cold portion of North Korea just above the 38th Parallel later identified as the 'Punchbowl' and 'Heartbreak Ridge.' For that service in the Korean War, the Marine Corps awarded me three battle stars for 'action against the enemy.'"

However, former Republican Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Jr., who served with Robertson in Korea, wrote a public letter which said that Robertson was actually spared combat duty when his powerful father, a U.S. Senator, intervened on his behalf, and that Robertson spent most of his time in an office in Japan. According to McCloskey, his time in the service was not in combat but as the "liquor officer" responsible for keeping the officers' clubs supplied with liquor. Robertson filed a $35 million libel suit against McCloskey in 1986. He dropped the case in 1988, before it came to trial and paid McCloskey's court costs.

Robertson was promoted to first lieutenant in 1952 upon his return to the United States. He then went on to receive a Bachelor of Laws degree from Yale University Law School in 1955. However, he failed to pass the bar exam, shortly thereafter underwent his religious conversion, and decided against pursuing a career in law. Instead, Robertson attended the New York Theological Seminary, and was awarded a Master of Divinity degree in 1959.

Religious career

In 1956 Robertson found his faith through Dutch missionary Cornelius Vanderbreggen, who impressed Robertson both by his lifestyle and his message. Vanderbreggen quoted Proverbs (3:5, 6), "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths", which Robertson considers to be the "guiding principle" of his life. He was ordained as a minister of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1961.

In 1960, Robertson established the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He started it by buying a small UHF station in nearby Portsmouth. Later in 1977 he purchased a local Leased access cable TV channel in the Hampton Roads area and called it CBN. Originally he went door-to-door in Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, and other surrounding areas asking Christians to buy cable boxes so that they could receive his new channel. He also canvassed local churches in the Virginia Beach area to do the same, and solicited donations through public speaking engagements at local churches and on CBN. One of his friends, John Giminez, the pastor of Rock Church Virginia Beach, was influential in helping Robertson establish CBN with donations, as well as offering the services of volunteers from his church.

CBN is now seen in 180 countries and broadcast in 71 languages. He founded the CBN Cable Network, which was renamed the CBN Family Channel in 1988 and later simply the Family Channel. When the Family Channel became too profitable for Robertson to keep it under the CBN umbrella without endangering CBN's non-profit status, he formed International Family Entertainment Inc. in 1990 with the Family Channel as its main subsidiary. Robertson sold the Family Channel to the News Corporation in 1997, which renamed it Fox Family. A condition of the sale was that the station would continue airing Robertson's television program, ''The 700 Club'', twice a day in perpetuity, regardless of any changes of ownership. The channel is now owned by Disney and run as "ABC Family". On December 3, 2007, Robertson resigned as chief executive of CBN; he was succeeded by his son, Gordon.

Robertson founded CBN University in 1977 on CBN's Virginia Beach campus. It was renamed Regent University in 1989. Robertson serves as its chancellor. He is also founder and president of the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm that defends Christians whose First Amendment rights have allegedly been violated. The law firm, headquartered in the same building that houses Regent's law school, focuses on "pro-family, pro-liberty and pro-life" cases nationwide.

Robertson is also an advocate of Christian dominionism — the idea that Christians have a right to rule.

In 1994, he was a signer of the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

Pat Robertson was a fundraiser for the Nicaraguan Contras. In March 1986, he told ''Israeli Foreign Affairs'' that South Africa was a major contributor to the Reagan administration's efforts to help the anti-Sandinista forces.

1988 presidential bid

In September 1986, Robertson announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Robertson said he would pursue the nomination only if three million people signed up to volunteer for his campaign by September 1987. Three million responded, and by the time Robertson announced he would be running in September 1987, he also had raised millions of dollars for his campaign fund. He surrendered his ministerial credentials and turned leadership of CBN over to his son, Tim. His campaign, however, against incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush, was seen as a long shot.

Robertson ran on a standard conservative platform. Among his policies, he wanted to ban pornography, reform the education system, and eliminate departments such as the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. He also supported a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

Robertson's campaign got off to a strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucus, ahead of Bush. He did poorly in the subsequent New Hampshire primary, however, and was unable to be competitive once the multiple-state primaries began. Robertson ended his campaign before the primaries were finished. His best finish was in Washington, winning the majority of caucus delegates. He later spoke at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans and told his remaining supporters to cast their votes for Bush, who ended up winning the nomination and the election. He then returned to CBN and has remained there as a religious broadcasting broadcaster.

Books

Episcopalian professor of theology Ephraim Radner accuses Robertson of espousing anti-semitic beliefs in the book:

Business interests

Robertson is the founder and chairman of The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) Inc., and founder of International Family Entertainment Inc., Regent University, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, American Center for Law and Justice, The Flying Hospital, Inc. and several other organizations and broadcast entities. Robertson was the founder and co-chairman of International Family Entertainment Inc. (IFE).

Formed in 1990, IFE produced and distributed family entertainment and information programming worldwide. IFE's principal business was The Family Channel, a satellite delivered cable-television network with 63 million U.S. subscribers. IFE, a publicly held company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was sold in 1997 to Fox Kids Worldwide, Inc. for $1.9 billion, whereupon it was renamed Fox Family Channel. Disney acquired FFC in 2001 and its name was changed again, to ABC Family.

Robertson is a global businessman with media holdings in Asia, the United Kingdom, and Africa. He struck a deal with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based General Nutrition Center to produce and market a weight-loss shake he created and promoted on ''The 700 Club''.

In 1999, Robertson entered into a joint venture with the Bank of Scotland to provide financial services in the United States. However, the move was met with criticism in the UK due to Robertson's views on homosexuality. Robertson commented that “In Europe, the big word is tolerance. You tolerate everything. Homosexuals are riding high in the media ... And in Scotland, you can't believe how strong the homosexuals are." Shortly afterward, the Bank of Scotland canceled the venture.

Robertson's extensive business interests have earned him a net worth estimated between $200 million and $1 billion.

A fan of Thoroughbred horse racing, Robertson paid $520,000 for a colt he named Mr. Pat. Trained by John Kimmel, Mr. Pat was not a successful runner. He was nominated for, but did not run in, the 2000 Kentucky Derby.

According to a June 2, 1999, article in ''The Virginian-Pilot'', Robertson had extensive business dealings with Liberian president Charles Taylor. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his ''700 Club'' viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. In response to Taylor's alleged crimes against humanity, the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his capture. Robertson accused President George W. Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." At the time Taylor was harboring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade. On February 4, 2010, at his war crimes trial in the Hague, Taylor testified that Robertson was his main political ally in the U.S., and that he had volunteered to make Liberia's case before U.S. administration officials in exchange for concessions to Robertson's Freedom Gold, Ltd., to which Taylor gave a contract to mine gold in southeast Liberia. In 2010, a spokesman for Robertson said that the company's arrangements — in which the Liberian government got a 10 percent equity interest in the company and Liberians could purchase at least 15 percent of the shares after the exploration period — were similar to many American companies doing business in Africa at the time.

Political activism

After his unsuccessful presidential campaign, Robertson started the Christian Coalition, a 1.7 million member Christian right organization that campaigned mostly for conservative candidates. It was sued by the Federal Election Commission "for coordinating its activities with Republican candidates for office in 1990, 1992 and 1994 and failing to report its expenditures".

In 1994, the Coalition was fined for "improperly [aiding] then Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Oliver North, who was then the Republican Senate nominee in Virginia." Robertson left the Coalition in 2001.

Robertson has been a governing member of the Council for National Policy (CNP): Board of Governors 1982, President Executive Committee 1985–86, member, 1984, 1988, 1998.

On November 7, 2007, Robertson announced that he was endorsing Rudy Giuliani to be the Republican nominee in the 2008 Presidential election.

While usually associated with the political right, Pat Robertson has recently begun endorsing environmental causes. He appears in a commercial with Al Sharpton, joking about this, and urging people to join the We can Solve it Campaign against global warming.

In January 2009, on a broadcast of ''The 700 Club'', Robertson stated that he is "adamantly opposed" to the division of Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. He also stated that Armageddon is "not going to be fought at Megiddo" but will be the "battle of Jerusalem," when "the forces of all nations come together and try to take Jerusalem away from the Jews. Jews are not going to give up Jerusalem — they shouldn't — and the rest of the world is going to insist they give it up." Robertson added that Jerusalem is a "spiritual symbol that must not be given away" because "Jesus Christ the Messiah will come down to the part of Jerusalem that the Arabs want," and that's "not good."

Controversies and criticisms

Controversies surrounding Robertson include his earlier work as a faith healer, his claim that some Protestant denominations harbor the spirit of the Antichrist, and his claims of having the power to deflect hurricanes through prayer; he has also denounced Hinduism as "demonic" and Islam as "Satanic." Robertson has issued multiple condemnations of feminism, homosexuality, abortion and liberal college professors. Robertson also had financial ties to former presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, both internationally denounced for their human rights violations. Robertson was criticized worldwide for his call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination and for his remarks concerning Ariel Sharon's health as an act of God.

The week of September 11, 2001, Robertson discussed the terror attacks with Jerry Falwell, who said that "the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this" in addition to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians [who have] helped [the terror attacks of September 11th] happen." Robertson replied, "I totally concur." Both evangelists came under attack from President George W. Bush for their statements, for which they later issued apologies.

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina killed 1,836 people, Robertson implied on the September 12th broadcast of ''The 700 Club'' that the storm was God's punishment in response to America's abortion policy. He suggested that September 11 and the disaster in New Orleans "could... be connected in some way".

On November 9, 2009, Robertson said that Islam is "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination." He went on to elaborate that "you're dealing with not a religion, you're dealing with a political system, and I think we should treat it as such, and treat its adherents as such as we would members of the communist party, members of some fascist group."

Robertson's response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake also drew controversy and condemnation. Robertson claimed that Haiti's founders had sworn a "pact to the Devil" in order to liberate themselves from the French slave owners and indirectly attributed the earthquake to the consequences of the Haitian people being "cursed" for doing so. CBN later issued a statement saying that Robertson's comments "were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Dutty Boukman at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French." Various prominent voices of mainline and evangelical Christianity promptly denounced Robertson's remarks as false, untimely, insensitive, and not representative of Christian thought on the issue.

In 1995 Sita Ram Goel sent him Goel's book "Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression", and a letter in protest to Robertson's remarks towards the religion of Hinduism.

Predictions

Several times near New Year, Robertson has announced that God told him several truths or events that would happen in the following year. "I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."

1982: Doomsday

In late 1976, Robertson predicted that the end of the world was coming in October or November 1982. In a May 1980 broadcast of ''The 700 Club'' he stated, "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world."

2006: Pacific Northwestern tsunami

In May 2006, Robertson declared that storms and possibly a tsunami would hit America's coastline sometime in 2006. Robertson supposedly received this revelation from God during an annual personal prayer retreat in January. The claim was repeated four times on ''The 700 Club''.

On May 8, 2006, Robertson said, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms." On May 17, 2006, he elaborated, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest." While this claim didn't garner the same level of controversy as some of his other statements, it was generally received with mild amusement by the Pacific Northwest media. The History Channel's initial airing of its new series, ''Mega Disasters'', debut episode "West Coast Tsunami", was broadcast the first week of May.

2007: Terror attack

On the January 2, 2007, broadcast of ''The 700 Club'', Robertson said that God spoke to him and told him that "mass killings" were to come during 2007, due to a terrorist attack on the United States. He added, "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." When a terrorist attack failed to happen in 2007, Robertson said, in January 2008, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in his mercy spared us."

2008: Worldwide violence and American recession

On the January 2, 2008 episode of ''The 700 Club'', Pat Robertson predicted that 2008 would be a year of worldwide violence. He also predicted that a recession would occur in the United States that would be followed by a stock market crash by 2010. However, there was a decrease in overall deaths for the period, and the American economy had already entered a recession in 2007, with increased household debt and the collapse of financial institutions.

2008: Mideast meltdown

In October 2008, Robertson posted a press release on the Georgian Conflict speculating that the conflict is a Russian ploy to enter the Middle East, and that instability caused by a predicted pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran would result in Syria's and Iran's launching nuclear strikes on other targets. He also said that if the United States were to oppose Russia's expansion, nuclear strikes on American soil are also pending. "We will suffer grave economic damage, but will not engage in military action to stop the conflict. However, we may not be spared nuclear strikes against coastal cities. In conclusion, it is my opinion that we have between 75 and 120 days before the Middle East starts spinning out of control."

2009: Economic chaos and recovery

On the January 1, 2009 broadcast of ''The 700 Club'', Robertson said, "If I'm hearing [God] right, gold will go to about $1900 dollars an ounce and oil to $300 a barrel." He also suggested that Americans would broadly accept socialism. Despite these predictions, he also said that economically, "things are getting ready to turn around."

Works

''Shout it from the Housetops'' an autobiography with Jamie Buckingham (1972, repr 1995)

''The Secret Kingdom'' (1982)

''Answers to 200 of Life's Most Probing Questions'' (c1984)

''Beyond Reason: How Miracles can Change your Life'' (1985)

''America's Dates with Destiny'' (1986)

''The Plan'' (1989)

''The New Millennium'' (1990)

''The New World Order'' (1991)

''Turning Tide: The Fall of Liberalism and the Rise of Common Sense'' (c1993)

''The End of the Age'' (1995, fiction)

''Bring It On'' (2003)

''The Ten Offenses'' (2004)

''Courting Disaster'' (2004)

See also

''The 700 Club''

Christian Broadcasting Network

Christian right

Christian fundamentalism

Christian Coalition of America

Christian Zionism

Moral majority

Operation Blessing

References

Further reading

Rob Boston. ''The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition''

Harrell Jr., David Edwin ''Pat Robertson: A Life and Legacy'' (2010) 442 pages. Scholarly biography draws on documents and interviews in seven countries

David John Marley. ''Pat Robertson: An American Life'' -

External links

Official Pat Robertson Website

Brian Ross. Some Question Robertson's ''Katrina'' Charity, ABC News, September 9, 2005.

"Preacher: God told him about storms, tsunami"

Robertson Denounces Hinduism as 'Demonic'"

2000 lbs. leg press

Robertson talks about his prostate cancer surgery with Laparoscopic Radical Prostatectomy

NPR Audio Report: Televangelist Robertson Urges U.S. Hit on Chavez

Archive of American Television interview with Pat Robertson

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:1930 births Category:Living people Category:American anti-communists Category:American businesspeople Category:American Christian ministers Category:American Christian religious leaders Category:American Christian writers Category:American Christian Zionists Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American racehorse owners and breeders Category:American religious leaders Category:American television evangelists Category:Anti-Masonry Category:Apocalypticists Category:Christian fundamentalism Category:Christianity conspiracy theorists Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Criticism of feminism Category:Criticism of Islam Category:People from Lexington, Virginia Category:People from Staten Island Category:People from Virginia Beach, Virginia Category:Regent University people Category:Religious scandals Category:Southern Baptists Category:United States Marine Corps officers Category:United States presidential candidates, 1988 Category:University and college founders Category:Washington and Lee University alumni Category:Yale Law School alumni

ar:بات روبرتسون da:Pat Robertson de:Pat Robertson es:Pat Robertson eo:Pat Robertson fa:پت رابرتسون fr:Pat Robertson he:פט רוברטסון nl:Pat Robertson ja:パット・ロバートソン pt:Pat Robertson ru:Робертсон, Пэт simple:Pat Robertson fi:Pat Robertson sv:Pat Robertson

Coordinates	52°24′″N16°55′″N
name	Iris Robinson
constituency mp1	Strangford
term start1	7 June 2001
term end1	13 January 2010
majority1	13,049 (35.2%)
predecessor1	John Taylor
successor1	Jim Shannon
constituency am2	Strangford
assembly2	Northern Ireland
term start2	25 June 1998
term end2	12 January 2010
predecessor2	''New assembly''
office3	Democratic Unionist Party Spokesperson for Health
term start3	2001
term end3	9 January 2010
leader3	Ian PaisleyPeter Robinson
birth date	September 06, 1949
birth place	Belfast, Northern Ireland
nationality	British
spouse	Peter Robinson
children	2 sons, 1 daughter
party	Democratic Unionist Party (until 9 January 2010)Independent (from 9 January 2010)
religion	Elim Pentecostal Church }}

Iris Robinson (née Collins; born 6 September 1949) is a former Northern Ireland Unionist politician. She is married to Peter Robinson, who is currently the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Robinson was first elected councillor for Castlereagh Borough Council in 1989, and served as Mayor in 1992 and 1995. She was a member of the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue from 1995 to 1997. In 1998 she was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for the Democratic Unionist Party as member for Strangford, acting as Deputy Whip and health spokesperson. She was elected as DUP Member of Parliament for Strangford at the 2001 general election, replacing the Ulster Unionist Party's John Taylor. She was re-elected at the 2005 general election.

Robinson describes herself as a born again Christian, and has publicly stated that "the government has the responsibility to uphold God's laws". In light of this, she was criticised for her views on homosexuality in 2008.

In December 2009, Robinson announced that she would leave politics and withdraw from public life following prolonged periods of mental illness. In January 2010, it emerged that Robinson had an extramarital affair with a 19-year-old in 2008, and she and her husband were faced with allegations of financial impropriety related to the affair. It was announced on 9 January 2010 that her membership of the DUP had been terminated, and that she would stand down from elected office. On 12 January 2010 she resigned from the Northern Ireland Assembly, and on 13 January 2010, she resigned from the House of Commons and Castlereagh (borough).

Personal life

The oldest of seven children, Iris Collins was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland to Mary McCarten and Joseph Collins, an English soldier. She grew up in a working-class area in the east of the city. She describes herself as a born again Christian and attends Metropolitan Tabernacle Church in Belfast. She comes from family with a mixed religious background as ten of her first cousins are Roman Catholics. She attended Cregagh Primary School, Knockbreda Intermediate School and Cregagh Technical College before becoming a secretary.

She married Peter Robinson on 26 July 1970. They were the first husband and wife ever to represent Northern Ireland constituencies in Parliament at the same time. They have three grown-up children: Jonathan, Gareth and Rebekah. Gareth Robinson is a Councillor on Castlereagh Borough Council.

Outside of politics Robinson listed her interests as charity fundraising for multiple sclerosis, interior design and horseriding.

Political career

Robinson was first elected councillor for Castlereagh (borough) in 1989. She became the Council's first woman mayor in 1992 and served as mayor again in 1995. She was a member of the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue from 1995 to 1997. She was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, representing the constituency of Strangford. She acted as the DUP health spokesperson.

Robinson was elected as the DUP Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Strangford at the 2001 general election, replacing the Ulster Unionist Party's John Taylor. She was re-elected at the 2005 general election.

Since taking up her seat in the House of Commons, Robinson has voted in 32 percent of votes in parliament, below the average among MPs. In her maiden speech she spoke about the "betrayal" felt by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, criticising the Government's policy on policing.

Robinson's voting record shows that she voted strongly against introducing foundation hospitals, very strongly for the Iraq War, moderately for an investigation into said war, voted moderately against LGBT rights, and never voted on transparent Parliament or on replacing Trident. Robinson also voted for Labour's 42-day terror detention, part of the Counter-Terrorism Bill.

Robinson was suspended from Stormont for a day on 19 November 2007 after refusing to withdraw "unparliamentary" comments she had made about the health minister, Michael McGimpsey.

In an interview with the ''Sunday Tribune'' in April 2008, anticipating becoming "First Lady" of Northern Ireland, Iris spoke out against Hillary Clinton alluding to her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky: "No woman would put up with what she tolerated from her husband when he was president. She was thinking only of her future political career. It's all about power and not principle." Robinson was quoted as hoping that Hillary would not become US president.

Controversies

Comments about homosexuality

In June 2008, shortly after a homophobic attack (involving physical assault) on a gay man in Northern Ireland, she made comments on the BBC Radio Ulster's ''Stephen Nolan Show'' offering to recommend homosexuals to psychiatric counselling. While condemning the attack, she claimed that homosexuality was an "abomination" and it made her feel "sick" and "nauseous", and offered to refer homosexuals to a psychiatrist she knew. In a subsequent interview, Robinson defended her views and denied prejudice against LGBT people, saying that "just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual.... If anyone takes issue, they're taking issue with the word of God". Her comments were rebuffed by representatives of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Rainbow Project, the Alliance Party, Sinn Féin, and the Social Democratic and Labour Party. The psychiatrist in question, Dr. Paul Miller, later resigned as her "adviser", and stood down from his post of consultant psychiatrist at Belfast's Mater hospital. He is no longer a consultant psychiatrist within the NHS and has been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC). A police investigation followed these comments, over 100 complaints were made, and gay rights activist Robert Toner also made a complaint to the Equality Commission.

Robinson subsequently repeated her views in parliamentary session. Speaking in a 17 June 2008 Northern Ireland Grand Committee session on ''Risk Assessment and Management of Sex Offenders'', she said: "There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children" She reiterated her statement to the ''Belfast Telegraph'' on 21 June 2008, but later claimed that she had been "misrepresented" in ''Hansard''. Her claims of misrepresentation were challenged when Alliance Party Executive Director Gerry Lynch confirmed with ''Hansard'' staff that Robinson's comments were in fact correctly quoted. Further controversy was caused on 17 July 2008 when on the ''Stephen Nolan Show'' Robinson stated "it is the government's responsibility to uphold God's law". In the Northern Ireland Assembly on 30 June 2008, in a discussion about "LGBT Groups: Mental-Health Needs", Robinson said that "Homosexuality, like all sin, is an abomination," and suggested that teenagers needed help deciding whether they were homosexual or heterosexual. During this period, Robinson herself was having an adulterous affair with a 19-year old man.

By late July 2008, the ''Belfast Telegraph'' reported that "[A]lmost 11,000 people have signed a petition calling on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to reprimand DUP MP Iris Robinson over her controversial remarks about homosexuality" and "[Fewer than] 30 people have signed an opposing petition calling on the Prime Minister to allow the comments to go un-reprimanded as a matter of personal opinion and religion". As a result of her comments, Robinson was named "Bigot of the Year" for 2008 by Stonewall.

Expenses row

In April 2009, both Iris and Peter Robinson came under fire after Commons MPs' expenses accounts were leaked to the press. The couple were described as the ''"swish family Robinson"'' by the ''News of the World'' and ''Daily Mail'' after claims that they were receiving £571,939.41 a year in various salaries and expenses, with a further £150,000 in salaries being paid to four of the couple's family members.

Extramarital affair and financial investigation

On 28 December 2009, and immediately prior to the airing of an investigative BBC programme looking at her personal life and financial dealings, Robinson announced her decision to retire from politics after claiming that she had been suffering serious bouts of depression. At the time she said the stress and strain of public life came at a cost, and that her health had suffered.

On 6 January 2010, Robinson issued a statement in which she said that she had attempted suicide on 1 March 2009. BBC's ''Spotlight'' programme revealed on 7 January 2010 that Robinson had an affair with Kirk McCambley, who was 19 years old at the time. It is also alleged that she encouraged friends to provide financial backing to assist her lover in a business venture. According to a BBC investigation, the payments she arranged from property developers to McCambley were £50,000 and as these had not been declared to the Northern Ireland Assembly this action broke the law. Robinson subsequently asked McCambley for £5,000 in cash; as well as a cheque made out to Dundonald's Light 'n Life Church, which she attends. It is alleged that Peter pressed his wife to return this money - however, he failed to inform the proper authorities about the transaction, an apparent breach of his duty as First Minister of Northern Ireland to act in the public interest. Reports have been made of further affairs, with among others, Kirk McCambley's father Billy, who died of cancer in March 2008.

Robinson's intention to retire from elective office was announced on 11 January 2010 and she resigned on 13 January 2010.

Castlereagh Borough Council announced on 14 January 2010 that it had voted to carry out an external investigation in the catering contract awarded to Kirk McCambley. Terms of reference for the investigation include identifying if the Council incurred any financial loss and whether officers and elected representatives complied with the requirements of all relevant local government legislation and guidance in the awarding the lease for the Lock-Keeper’s Inn. On 26 May 2011, the DUP announced that an independent investigation has cleared Iris Robinson of any wrongdoing in connection with the awarding of a contract to her former teenage lover.

The PSNI announced on 21 January 2010 that were to conduct an investigation into Iris Robinson's financial affairs. On 20 February 2010 officers from PSNI searched the offices of Castlereagh Borough Council as part of this investigation. On 25 June 2010, it became public that Robinson had been interviewed as part of a police investigation over money she obtained from two developers.

Robinson reportedly received "acute psychiatric treatment" and was under 24-hour suicide watch following the BBC Spotlight documentary.

Later Years

Robinson had been receiving psychiatric treatment in a London clinic since January 2010 but returned to Northern Ireland on 19 September 2010 where she continues her treatment.

Robinson made her first appearance in public almost seven months after her return, at the funeral of her mother at Bethany Free Presbyterian Church in County Armagh on 14 April 2011. Among the mourners was Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness who embraced Robinson on the steps of the church.

Her husband stated his wife was too ill to attend the Royal wedding later in the month. Robinson did however manage to make an appearance at the state banquet in Dublin during the Queen's visit to Ireland just twenty days later.

References

External links

Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Iris Robinson

Guardian - Special Report

Maiden Speech : House of Commons - 25 June 2001

{{s-ttl|title = MLA for Strangford |years = 1998–2010}} {{s-ttl|title = Member of Parliament for Strangford |years = 2001–2010}}

Category:1949 births Category:British female MPs Category:Councillors in Northern Ireland Category:Democratic Unionist Party MPs Category:Female members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Northern Irish constituencies Category:Living people Category:Mayors of places in Northern Ireland Category:Members of the Northern Ireland Forum Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Northern Irish constituencies Category:Elim Pentecostals from Northern Ireland Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 1998–2003 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2003–2007 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2007–2011 Category:People from Belfast Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010

de:Iris Robinson ga:Iris Robinson ja:アイリス・ロビンソン

Coordinates	52°24′″N16°55′″N
name	Peter Hitchens
birth name	Peter Jonathan Hitchens
birth date	October 28, 1951
birth place	Sliema, Malta
occupation	Author, journalist
nationality	United Kingdom
Alma mater	University of York
religion	Anglican Christian
notableworks	''The Abolition of Britain'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Rage Against God''
relatives	Christopher Hitchens (brother)
website	http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk }}

Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an award-winning British columnist and author. He has published five books, including ''The Abolition of Britain'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' and most recently ''The Rage Against God''. Hitchens writes for Britain's ''The Mail on Sunday'' newspaper. A former resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington, Hitchens continues to work as an occasional foreign reporter, and appears frequently in the British broadcast media. He is the younger brother of the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Michael Gove, writing in ''The Times'', has asserted that, for Hitchens, what is more important than the split between the Left and the Right is "the deeper gulf between the restless progressive and the Christian pessimist", and in 2010 Hitchens himself wrote "in all my experience in life, I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man, and his inability to achieve perfection, than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the State".

Early life

Peter Hitchens was born in 1951 in Malta, where his father was stationed with the Royal Navy. He was educated at The Leys School, which he left at 15, completing his secondary education at the Oxford College of Further Education before entering the University of York, where he attained a BA in Politics, and is said to have replied 'I was too busy starting a revolution' when asked why he was late for a lecture. He married Eve Ross, the daughter of left-wing journalist David Ross, in 1983.

Career in journalism

Hitchens worked for the ''Daily Express'' between 1977 and December 2000, initially as a reporter specialising in education and industrial and labour affairs, then as a political reporter, and subsequently as Deputy Political Editor. While working for the newspaper in 1992 he broke the story concerning Jennifer's Ear.

Leaving parliamentary journalism to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, he reported on the decline and ultimate collapse of the communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries, an assignment which culminated in a stint as Moscow Correspondent, where he witnessed and reported on the final months of the Soviet Union in 1990/91. He became the ''Daily Express'' Washington correspondent soon afterwards. Returning to London in 1995, he became a commentator and, eventually, a regular columnist. Hitchens continued to espouse a conservative viewpoint despite the publication's general move towards the political centre in the mid-nineties, and its decision to support the Labour Party under Tony Blair in the months approaching the 1997 general election. In December 2000, Hitchens announced his departure from the ''Daily Express'' in response to the title's acquisition by Richard Desmond; Hitchens felt that his own moral and religious conservatism was incompatible with Desmond's publishing a string of sex magazines. He joined ''The Mail on Sunday'', where he has a weekly column and weblog in which he debates directly with readers and produces occasional reportage from the UK.

Hitchens has also written for ''The Spectator'', a conservative British magazine, and sporadically for more left-leaning publications such as ''The Guardian'', ''Prospect'', and the ''New Statesman''. He is also an occasional contributor to ''The American Conservative'' magazine.

In 2007 and 2009 Hitchens was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Journalism. He won the prize in 2010 for his foreign reporting.

Foreign reporting

In 2010 Hitchens was described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as "a forceful, tenacious, eloquent and brave journalist. Readers with long memories may remember his extraordinary coverage of the revolution in Romania in 1989, or more recently his intrepid travels to places such as North Korea. He lambasts woolly thinking and crooked behaviour at home and abroad".

Hitchens first became a roving foreign reporter in the early 1990s while working for the ''Daily Express'', when he reported from South Africa during the last days of apartheid, and from Somalia at the time of the US-led military intervention in the country. He continued his foreign reporting after joining ''The Mail on Sunday'', for which he has written several foreign reports, including from Russia (including Moscow) and the US, Western and Eastern Europe, many of the former Soviet Republics (including a 2008 visit to Minsk in Belarus, and a 2010 report from Sevastopol in Ukraine described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as a "dismaying lapse"), Astana in Kazakhstan, the Middle East (including Israel, Gaza, a 2003 visit to Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion, and an undercover report from Iran, which was described by Iain Dale as "a quite brilliant account"), Africa (including a trip to the Congo in 2008, during which he narrowly avoided being lynched) Cuba, Venezuela, China, Japan, North Korea, Burma and Istanbul. In 2009, Hitchens was shortlisted for Foreign Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards.

In 2010, Hitchens was awarded the Orwell Prize in recognition of his foreign reporting.

Appearances in the British broadcast media

Hitchens speaks frequently on British radio and television, often debating (typically left-wing) opponents on a variety of social and political topics. He is a regular panellist on ''Question Time'' and ''Any Questions?'' and has been a frequent guest on ''This Week'' with Andrew Neil, ''The Daily Politics'' and ''The Big Questions''. In 2011, Hitchens wrote of his relationship with the broadcast media that "People like me – though still allowed to speak – are allowed on to mainstream national broadcasting only under strict conditions: that we are 'balanced' by at least three other people who disagree with us so that our views, actually held by millions, are made to look like an eccentric minority opinion".

Hitchens has authored and presented several documentaries on Channel 4 and BBC Four, in which he examined Britain's entry into the Common Market, discussed the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, and critically examined the political achievements of Nelson Mandela, and later the career of David Cameron (see ''On the Conservative Party''). In the late 1990s, he co-presented a programme on Talk Radio UK with Labour Party stalwarts Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell. Hitchens was offered the chance to present a programme on his own by the station's then boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, but preferred and suggested an adversarial format with a left-wing co-presenter, believing this to be the best way of achieving broadcast fairness and balance.

June 2011 ''Question Time'' appearance

In June 2011, Hitchens was booed and heckled at length by a ''Question Time'' audience for expressing a socially conservative position on the sexualisation of children, and was the only panel member to adopt this position. During the same programme, chairman and presenter David Dimbleby put to Hitchens that the paper he worked for was "a bigoted, sexist, homophobic comic strip". Shortly after his appearance, Hitchens wrote "Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think? Sometimes I wonder".

Personal political history

Hitchens studied politics at the University of York from 1970 to 1973. He was a Trotskyist member of the International Socialists from 1969 to 1975, and joined the British Labour Party in 1977, campaigning for Ken Livingstone's unsuccessful candidature for Hampstead in the 1979 general election. Hitchens left the Labour Party in 1983 when he became a political reporter at the ''Daily Express'', thinking it wrong to carry a party card when directly reporting politics. The period also coincided with a culmination of growing personal disillusionment with the Labour movement. In 2010, Hitchens dismissed the "cruel revolutionary rubbish" he promoted as a Trotskyist as "poison".

He joined the Conservative Party in 1997, but left in 2003. Hitchens challenged Michael Portillo for the Conservative Party nomination in the Kensington and Chelsea seat in 1999.

Hitchens believes that no party he could support will be created until the Conservative Party disintegrates, an event he first began calling for in 2006. From 2008, he began frequently advocating in his writing that what would facilitate such a collapse would be for the Conservative Party to lose the 2010 general election: "If they fail to win an election against this awful government, then it is my belief and hope that they will collapse. Many of their MPs and supporters will leave politics altogether, others will go to the Liberal Democrats or Labour, where they belong. Some will be interested in an entirely new party, which will not be the Conservatives and so will be able to appeal to the many patriotic, law-abiding people abandoned by Labour".

Public image

In ''The Guardian'', James Silver describes Hitchens as "the Mail on Sunday's fulminator-in-chief" and his columns as "molten Old Testament fury shot through with visceral wit". Hitchens has said of his reputation: "I know a lot of people consider me to be disreputable or foaming at the mouth, but you have to learn not to care, or at least not to mind. I don't like being called 'bonkers' and I think to some extent it demeans people who use phrases like that. But I take comfort from the fact that most totalitarian regimes tend to classify their opponents as mentally disordered."

Core beliefs

Morality and religion

Hitchens, a former atheist, is a confirmed and communicant member of the Church of England and an advocate of moral virtues founded on religious (particularly Christian) faith. He argues that these have been undermined and eroded by social liberals, and by those he calls cultural Marxists, since the 1960s—a theory he explores in his book ''The Abolition of Britain''.

In support of this thesis, Hitchens cites, among other things, what he describes as serial attacks on marriage by the State. He identifies these attacks as the introduction of no-fault divorce, the removal or redistribution of what were formerly the exclusive privileges of marriage (and the resultant decline in status of the matrimonial state), the abolition of the Christian Sunday, and the growing economic and cultural pressure on wives and mothers to go out to work. He believes that without faith and without strong families, the development of conscience is stunted, private life is diminished and the power of the state increased.

He believes that many of the measures which created the "permissive society" were mistaken or excessive and need to be reexamined, and posits that homosexual relationships should not be granted legal parity with heterosexual marriage.

Hitchens believes that abortion should be illegal at any stage of pregnancy.

Hitchens defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 ''Book of Common Prayer'' and the Authorised (or King James) version of the Bible. Of the latter, he has written "it is not simply a translation, but a poetic translation, written to be read out loud to country people in large buildings without loudspeakers, to be remembered, to lodge in the mind and to disturb the temporal with the haunting sound of the eternal". Hitchens feels that both books are indispensable foundations of Anglicanism's "powerful combination of scripture, tradition and reason", and that they have been undermined as a result of "senior figures [within the Church of England] wishing to dump what they regard as the baggage of a penitential and gloomy past".

Hitchens has often spoken out against the liberal positions of the current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Hitchens does not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. In a review of his brother's work ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', he stated that, "many decades have passed since I fancied the story of Adam and Eve was literal truth, if I ever did.

Liberty, security and crime

Hitchens advocates a society governed by conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. He believes that capital punishment is a key element of a strong justice system.

He warns that the decline of conscience and morality will inevitably lead to a strong state. He is especially critical of the use of "security" as a pretext for diluting and eroding individual liberty. He argues that increased "security" destroys freedom without necessarily increasing safety, and says that there is no contradiction between maintaining liberty and protecting the realm.

Hitchens is critical of moves towards authoritarian government and the erosion of civil liberties, whether they come from the Right or the Left of the political spectrum. Accordingly, he has been highly critical of the British government's desire for identity cards, its attempts to abolish jury trial, to centralise the police, and its creation of a national law enforcement body in the form of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). He describes these developments as facets of governmental desire for permanent, irreversible constitutional revolution, and an attack on English liberty in general.

Hitchens is opposed to the relaxation of laws against the possession of illegal recreational drugs. He argues that the law's active disapproval of drug taking is an essential counterweight to the "pro-drug propaganda" of popular culture. He has said that attempts to combat drug use by restricting supply and persecuting drug dealers are invariably futile, unless possession and use are punished as well. He counters claims that the "War on Drugs" has failed by suggesting that the state has made no serious efforts to reduce or eliminate illegal drug consumption for many years. Hitchens has said that the prevailing approach, known as "Harm reduction", is defeatist and counter-productive. He was among the earliest commentators to argue that cannabis presents a major mental health risk to users.

Foreign policy

Hitchens opposed the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq Wars on the grounds that neither was in the interests of either Britain or the United States. He has not, however, associated himself with the Left-dominated anti-war campaigns, not least as he remains a strong supporter of the State of Israel. He also opposes the British military presence in Afghanistan, arguing that it is destined to fail and has no achievable aim. Hitchens made a live appearance on BBC News in November 2009 during which he stated, in a response to Gordon Brown's announcement that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan, that a ridiculous position had been reached in which none of the front bench politicians of any of the three main British parties were prepared to say that the British mission to the country had failed.

On Europe, Hitchens argues that the United Kingdom should negotiate an amicable departure from the European Union, whose laws and traditions he regards as incompatible with the laws and liberties of England, and with the national independence of the United Kingdom as a whole. He also believes that the interests of the European Union are often different from—and in many cases hostile to—those of the UK. Devolution of governmental powers to Scotland and Wales in 1998 was, for Hitchens, not a step towards true independence for those countries, but rather part of an EU-inspired strategy to dissolve the UK into statelets and regions, as a preliminary step to its complete absorption into a European superstate. For the same reason, he has opposed attempts to divide England into regions.

World War II

For most of his career, Hitchens took the view that World War II was "the part of British history which provides the ultimate justification and vindication of this country's existence, its heroic and solitary battle against Nazi tyranny". However, in 2008 he publicly reversed this view, referring in particular to the declaration of war made against Nazi Germany (after the invasion of Poland) which had, in his opinion, disastrous consequences for Britain. A subsequent analysis that Hitchens made of this issue in one of his columns was described by Michael White of ''The Guardian'' as being "as melancholy a cry of pain about the modern world as I have recently encountered". Hitchens has also written critically about the Allied policy of strategic bombing of German cities during the second world war, citing in particular the A.C. Grayling book ''Among the Dead Cities'', which in Hitchens's view makes "the case against the bombing of German civilians unanswerable".

Northern Ireland

Hitchens condemned the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a surrender to the Provisional IRA and a "collapse and a surrender to lawlessness". He believes that the best approach to solving Northern Ireland's problems would have been the full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, arguing that creating a Northern Irish Parliament at Stormont impeded this. He believes that the achievements of direct rule over Northern Ireland, not least in removing discrimination against Roman Catholics, have been greatly underestimated. He maintains that Northern Ireland is now only a provisional part of the UK since, under the terms of the agreement, it can be transferred to Irish sovereignty by a single, irreversible referendum.

Education

Hitchens condemns comprehensive education, the Plowden reforms of primary schooling and modern child-centred teaching methods, seeing them as egalitarian political projects with no educational justification and many educational disadvantages. He bases his case on John Marks's ''The Betrayed Generation'', (Centre for Policy Studies 2001), the Engineering Council's survey of changing undergraduate maths skills in 2000, and Durham University's unvarying annual general ability test, and has also cited a 2004 article by Jenni Russell in ''The Guardian'' which draws attention to this issue. Hitchens has also contended that comprehensive education has brought about a general dilution of education and of examination standards, and explores in detail the history and consequences of this development in Chapter Eleven of ''The Broken Compass''—'The Fall of the Meritocracy'. He believes a further consequence of egalitarian schooling is serious damage to the national culture, and fears that lowered standards in technical, scientific and mathematical education, combined with poor teaching of English and the resulting decline in literacy, threaten to leave Britain lagging behind emerging economic powers such as China and India.

As a means of improving standards in the UK, as well as increasing social mobility, Hitchens supports a return to the academically selective grammar school system which has been gradually dismantled by successive British governments since the issuing of Circular 10/65 by Anthony Crosland in 1965 (though Hitchens prefers the German system of selection to the Eleven Plus examination).

As a supporter of orthodox Christian morality, Hitchens opposes sex education in schools. He argues that the general introduction of sex education in schools has incontrovertibly been accompanied by an increase in sexual activity among the young, with a resultant rise in pregnancies, abortions and instances of sexually transmitted diseases—the very things that sex education is ostensibly intended to prevent. He argues that its real purpose is the undermining of Christian sexual morality, based on stable monogamous marriage.

Labour party

Hitchens contends that the modern version of the Labour party was "formed mainly by struggles in the 1980s" and in a programme of "social liberalism, egalitarian education and the sexual revolution" envisaged at the end of the 1950s by figures such as Anthony Crosland and Roy Jenkins; the latter Hitchens has written critically of at considerable length, and has likened his short book ''The Labour Case'' (1959) to "a revolutionary manifesto".

Hitchens was critical of New Labour for what he called "attacks on the constitution", and described its Prime Minister Tony Blair's constitutional reforms as a "slow-motion coup d'état". He has also asserted that the New Labour policy on immigration was a "slow motion putsch". Hitchens believes that the most profound changes brought about by New Labour were designed to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, to debauch civil service neutrality, and to turn Parliament into a mere tool of Downing Street, with Blair himself as Chief Executive. In Hitchens's view, the most significant single action in this programme was the passing of Orders in Council allowing Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, both political appointees, to give orders to civil servants. This signalled, in his view, a general attempt to politicise Whitehall, which has continued ever since. Hitchens claims to have detected a parallel effort to appropriate some of the trappings of monarchy and to diminish the Crown's significance and standing, which he sees as embryonic presidentialism.

Hitchens also often caricatured Blair as "Princess Tony". This was a reference to Blair's use of the expression "The People's Princess" to eulogise Princess Diana after her death. Hitchens has also been very critical of Blair's activity subsequent to his stepping down as Prime Minister. Hitchens described Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, as a "boring, dismal Marxoid", whose public performances were "horribly like Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of the tormented Captain Queeg in ''The Caine Mutiny''". However, Hitchens criticised what he saw as a "prejudiced, shallow" attempt to destroy Brown by the media after the latter became Prime Minister in 2007.

Conservative Party

Hitchens is dismissive of the modern British Conservative Party, frequently deriding the party's leadership as the "useless Tories". He has often been at odds with fellow conservatives, and has argued that the Conservative Party has a consistent record of ill-considered parliamentary acts and policies that cannot be dismissed as accidents or mistakes. He cites as examples: the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, the introduction of the GCSE exam, the Criminal Justice Act of 1991, the negotiation and signing of the Single European Act and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the severe reduction in defence spending at the end of the Cold War, the privatisation of the UK's railways, the Iraq War and the final abandonment of all attempts to re-introduce grammar schools.

In March 2007 Hitchens wrote and presented a television programme for Channel 4, ''Toff at the Top'', in which he argued this view. Hitchens views Cameron's social, educational, and foreign policies as being indistinguishable from those of New Labour. Cameron, having declined previous interview requests from Hitchens, also declined to participate in the broadcast. Subsequent to the programme's airing the Conservative leader described Hitchens as "a maniac" at a public meeting in Oxfordshire.

Hitchens has called for the establishment of a new political party in the UK, representing the traditionalist conservative strand of opinion that he espouses, and which would, in his own words, be "neither bigoted nor politically correct". He believes that such a movement cannot come into being until the Conservative Party collapses, arguing that many millions of Britons habitually vote for this and other political parties out of tribal loyalty, from which they cannot be detached by reasoned argument.

Poverty and wealth distribution

Hitchens believes there to be a correlation between adherence to strong ethical standards, including conscientious labour, deferred gratification, self-denial and thrift, and middle class status (and the material well-being it generally brings). He has stated that "The middle classes are not good because they are better off. They are better off because they are good." He rejects the belief that any poverty which exists in Britain is anything other than relative. "The British 'poor' of today do not starve, do not freeze, do not go without medical treatment—as truly poor people across the world undoubtedly still do." He argues that the claim that absolute poverty continues to exist in Britain is "a lie the Left uses to destroy the middle class".

Transport

Hitchens has criticised the Privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s, and mocks Conservatives for their belief that road transport, heavily state subsidised, is in some way more conservative than railways. He has also bemoaned the large-scale reductions made to Britain's rail infrastructure in the 1960s, and the subsequent increased focus on the motor car as the central plank of transport policy. Hitchens explores this issue in depth in 'The age of the train', chapter twelve of his book ''The Broken Compass''.

Global warming

Hitchens is sceptical of the alleged extent of man made global warming, has described the fuss surrounding it as "alarmist" and the facts presented as false or misleading or using data selectively. In particular, he praises the Christopher Booker work ''The Real Global Warming Disaster'' as being an effective exposé of many of what he sees as myths surrounding the theory.

Relationship with elder brother Christopher

Hitchens's elder brother is the prominent U.S.-based writer and antitheistic polemicist Christopher Hitchens. Christopher has said that the main difference between the two is their attitudes toward belief in the existence of God. Peter himself has said, "We inhabit separate worlds," and "We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other."

The brothers had a protracted falling out after Peter wrote an article in 2001 in ''The Spectator'' alleging that his brother had said he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon"—a claim denied by Christopher. After the birth of Peter's third child, the two brothers reconciled, although Christopher said "There is no longer any official froideur, but there's no official—what's the word?—chaleur, either."

Peter's review of ''God Is Not Great'' led to public argument between the brothers but not to any renewed estrangement. In the review, Peter wrote that his brother’s book was misguided, "mostly in the way that it blames faith for so many bad things and gives it no credit for any of the good it may have done. I think it misunderstands religious people and their aims and desires. And I think it asserts a number of things as true and obvious that are nothing of the sort".

In June 2007, the brothers appeared as panellists on BBC TV's ''Question Time'', where they clashed over a number of issues, most notably the intervention in Afghanistan. In April 2008, on US soil, they debated the invasion of Iraq and the existence of God, respectively. Peter Hitchens indicated that the occasion would mark the last time he would participate in such events with his brother, "because of the danger that they might turn into gladiatorial combat in which nothing would be resolved and enmity could be created."

However, in October 2010 at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the brothers again had a debate—described as a conversation with the press—over the nature of God in civilisation. The two clashed over the main issues, with Peter lamenting the decline in civility to levels "not far from the Stone Age." However, when the subject of Christopher's illness in concert with religion was brought up, Peter defended his brother's choice of beliefs, stating that he thought "it would be quite grotesque to imagine someone would have to get cancer to see the merits of religion."

Publications

Hitchens is the author of ''The Abolition of Britain'' (1999, ISBN 978-0-7043-8140-7) and ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003, ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), both critical of changes in British society since the 1960s. A compendium of his ''Daily Express'' columns was published under the title ''Monday Morning Blues'' in 2000.

An updated edition of ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003 ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), re-titled ''The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England'' (ISBN 978-1-84354-149-3) and featuring a new chapter on identity cards, was published in April 2004. ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-84706-405-9), was published in May 2009, and ''The Rage Against God'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-4411-0572-1), was published in Britain in March 2010, and was due to be published in the US (Zondervan ISBN 978-0-310-32031-9) in May 2010.

In January 2011 Hitchens announced he was working on a new book entitled ''The War We Never Fought'', about what he sees as the non-existent war on drugs.

Bibliography

See also

Conservatism

List of newspaper columnists

Paleoconservatism

Pro-life

Social conservatism

References

Further reading

"Brothers at war over Britain" Article on a debate about Britain's future with brother Christopher Hitchens, 15 October 1999. Includes some short, selected audio clips from the event.

Hitchens on the European Union" – December 2002. Karl Zinsmeister interviews Peter Hitchens at his home in Oxford.

Bulldog" – Guardian interview, 20 September 1999.

External links

;Regular features

Peter Hitchens's ''Mail on Sunday'' blog

;Book Reviews

Reviews of ''A Brief History of Crime'' in: ''The Daily Telegraph'', and ''The Observer''

;TV Reviews ''Reviews of ''Toff at the Top'' in:''

''The Daily Telegraph''; and

''The Times''.

Description of ''Toff at the Top'' on the Channel 4 website

;Video

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Coordinates	52°24′″N16°55′″N
Region	Western philosophy
Era	18th-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Thomas Paine
Birth date	February 9, 1737
Birth place	Thetford, Norfolk, England, Great Britain
Death date	June 08, 1809
Death place	New York City
School tradition	Enlightenment, Liberalism, Radicalism, Republicanism
Main interests	Religion, Ethics, Politics
Signature	Thomas Paine Signature.svg
Influences	Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Religious Society of Friends, Montesquieu, Benjamin Franklin
Influenced	Thomas Jefferson, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Mahatma Phule, Moncure D. Conway, Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Robert G. Ingersoll }}

Thomas "Tom" Paine ( June 8, 1809) was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination."

Born in Thetford, in the English county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet ''Common Sense'' (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and ''The American Crisis'' (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. His writing of "Common Sense" was so influential that John Adams reportedly said, "Without the pen of the author of 'Common Sense,' the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

In 1789 Paine visited France, and lived there for much of the following decade. He was deeply involved in the early stages of the French Revolution. He wrote the ''Rights of Man'' (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics, in particular the British statesman Edmund Burke. In Great Britain, for this publication he was later tried and convicted ''in absentia'' for the crime of seditious libel. Despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention in 1792. The Girondists regarded him as an ally, so, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy. In December of 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of ''The Age of Reason'' (1793–94), his book that advocates deism, promotes reason and freethinking, argues against institutionalized religion and Christian doctrines. He also wrote the pamphlet ''Agrarian Justice'' (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.

Paine remained in France during the early Napoleonic era, but condemned Napoleon's dictatorship, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed". In 1802, at President Jefferson's invitation, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized due to his criticism and ridicule of Christianity.

Early life

Paine was born the son of Joseph Pain, or Paine, a Quaker, and Frances (née Cocke), an Anglican, in Thetford, an important market town and coach stage-post, in rural Norfolk, England. Born Thomas Pain, despite claims that he changed his family name upon his emigration to America in 1774, he was using Paine in 1769, whilst still in Lewes, Sussex.

He attended Thetford Grammar School (1744–1749), at a time when there was no compulsory education. At age thirteen, he was apprenticed to his stay-maker father; in late adolescence, he enlisted and briefly served as a privateer, before returning to Britain in 1759. There, he became a master stay-maker, establishing a shop in Sandwich, Kent. On September 27, 1759, Thomas Paine married Mary Lambert. His business collapsed soon after. Mary became pregnant, and, after they moved to Margate, she went into early labor, in which she and their child died.

In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford to work as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762, he became an excise officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire; in August 1764, he was transferred to Alford, at a salary of £50 per annum. On August 27, 1765, he was fired as an Excise Officer for "claiming to have inspected goods he did not inspect." On July 31, 1766, he requested his reinstatement from the Board of Excise, which they granted the next day, upon vacancy. While awaiting that, he worked as a stay maker in Diss, Norfolk, and later as a servant (per the records, for a Mr. Noble, of Goodman's Fields, and for a Mr. Gardiner, at Kensington). He also applied to become an ordained minister of the Church of England and, per some accounts, he preached in Moorfields.

In 1767, he was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall; subsequently, he asked to leave this post to await a vacancy, thus, he became a schoolteacher in London. On February 19, 1768, he was appointed to Lewes, East Sussex, living above the fifteenth-century Bull House, the tobacco shop of Samuel Ollive and Esther Ollive.

There, Paine first became involved in civic matters, when Samuel Ollive introduced him to the Society of Twelve, a local, élite intellectual group that met semestrally, to discuss town politics. He also was in the influential vestry church group that collected taxes and tithes to distribute among the poor. On March 26, 1771, at age 34, he married Elizabeth Ollive, his landlord's daughter.

From 1772 to 1773, Paine joined excise officers asking Parliament for better pay and working conditions, publishing, in summer of 1772, ''The Case of the Officers of Excise'', a twenty-one-page article, and his first political work, spending the London winter distributing the 4,000 copies printed to the Parliament and others. In spring of 1774, he was fired from the excise service for being absent from his post without permission; his tobacco shop failed, too. On April 14, to avoid debtor's prison, he sold his household possessions to pay debts. On June 4, he formally separated from wife Elizabeth and moved to London, where, in September, the mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Commissioner of the Excise George Lewis Scott introduced him to Benjamin Franklin, who suggested emigration to British colonial America, and gave him a letter of recommendation. In October, Thomas Paine emigrated from Great Britain to the American colonies, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.

He barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The ship's water supplies were bad, and typhoid fever killed five passengers. On arriving at Philadelphia, he was too sick to debark. Benjamin Franklin's physician, there to welcome Paine to America, had him carried off ship; Paine took six weeks to recover his health. He became a citizen of Pennsylvania "by taking the oath of allegiance at a very early period." In January, 1775, he became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a position he conducted with considerable ability.

Paine designed the Sunderland Bridge of 1796 over the Wear River at Wearmouth, England. It was patterned after the model he had made for the Schuylkill River Bridge at Philadelphia in 1787, and the Sunderland arch became the prototype for many subsequent voussoir arches made in iron and steel. He also received a British patent for a single-span iron bridge, developed a smokeless candle, and worked with inventor John Fitch in developing steam engines.

American Revolution

Common Sense (1776)

Thomas Paine has a claim to the title ''The Father of the American Revolution'' because of ''Common Sense'', the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; signed ''"Written by an Englishman"'', the pamphlet became an immediate success. It quickly spread among the literate, and, in three months, 100,000 copies (estimated 500,000 total including pirated editions sold during the course of the Revolution) sold throughout the American British colonies (with only two million free inhabitants), making it the best-selling book ever. Paine's original title for the pamphlet was ''Plain Truth''; Paine's friend, pro-independence advocate Benjamin Rush, suggested ''Common Sense'' instead.

The pamphlet appeared in January 1776, after the Revolution had started. It was passed around, and often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly to spreading the idea of republicanism, bolstering enthusiasm for separation from Britain, and encouraging recruitment for the Continental Army. Paine provided a new and convincing argument for independence by advocating a complete break with history. ''Common Sense'' is oriented to the future in a way that compels the reader to make an immediate choice. It offers a solution for Americans disgusted and alarmed at the threat of tyranny.

Paine was not expressing original ideas in ''Common Sense'', but rather employing rhetoric as a means to arouse resentment of the Crown. To achieve these ends, he pioneered a style of political writing suited to the democratic society he envisioned, with ''Common Sense'' serving as a primary example. Part of Paine's work was to render complex ideas intelligible to average readers of the day, with clear, concise writing unlike the formal, learned style favored by many of Paine's contemporaries. Scholars have put forward various explanations to account for its success, including the historic moment, Paine's easy-to-understand style, his democratic ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology.

''Common Sense'' was immensely popular in disseminating to a very wide audience ideas that were already in common use among the elite who comprised Congress and the leadership cadre of the emerging nation. They rarely cited Paine's arguments in their public calls for independence. The pamphlet probably had little direct influence on the Continental Congress's decision to issue a Declaration of Independence, since that body was more concerned with how declaring independence would affect the war effort. Paine's great contribution was in initiating a public debate about independence, which had previously been rather muted.

Loyalists vigorously attacked ''Common Sense''; one attack, titled ''Plain Truth'' (1776), by Marylander James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack and warned that without monarchy, the government would "degenerate into democracy". Even some American revolutionaries objected to ''Common Sense''; late in life John Adams called it a "crapulous mass." Adams disagreed with the type of radical democracy promoted by Paine (that men who did not own property should still be allowed to vote and hold public office), and published ''Thoughts on Government'' in 1776 to advocate a more conservative approach to republicanism.

Crisis (1776)

In late 1776 Paine published ''The Crisis'' pamphlet series, to inspire the Americans in their battles against the British army. He juxtaposed the conflict between the good American devoted to civic virtue and the selfish provincial man. To inspire his soldiers, General George Washington had ''The American Crisis'', first ''Crisis'' pamphlet, read aloud to them. It begins:

Foreign Affairs

In 1777, Paine became secretary of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs. The following year, he alluded to continuing secret negotiation with France in his pamphlets; the resultant scandal and Paine's conflict with Robert Morris eventually led to Paine's expulsion from the Committee in 1779. However, in 1781, he accompanied John Laurens on his mission to France. Eventually, after much pleading from Paine, New York State recognised his political services by presenting him with an estate, at New Rochelle, New York, and Paine received money from Pennsylvania and from the US Congress at George Washington's suggestion. During the Revolutionary War, Paine served as an aide to the important general, Nathanael Greene. Paine's later years established him as "a missionary of world revolution."

Funding the Revolution

Paine accompanied Col. John Laurens to France and is credited with initiating the mission. It landed in France in March 1781 and returned to America in August with 2.5 million livres in silver, as part of a "present" of 6 million and a loan of 10 million. The meetings with the French king were most likely conducted in the company and under the influence of Benjamin Franklin. Upon returning to the United States with this highly welcomed cargo, Thomas Paine and probably Col. Laurens, "positively objected" that General Washington should propose that Congress remunerate him for his services, for fear of setting "a bad precedent and an improper mode." Paine made influential acquaintances in Paris, and helped organize the Bank of North America to raise money to supply the army. In 1785, he was given $3,000 by the U.S. Congress in recognition of his service to the nation.

Henry Laurens (the father of Col. John Laurens) had been the ambassador to the Netherlands, but he was captured by the British on his return trip there. When he was later exchanged for the prisoner Lord Cornwallis (in late 1781), Paine proceeded to the Netherlands to continue the loan negotiations. There remains some question as to the relationship of Henry Laurens and Thomas Paine to Robert Morris as the Superintendent of Finance and his business associate Thomas Willing who became the first president of the Bank of North America (in Jan. 1782). They had accused Morris of profiteering in 1779 and Willing had voted against the Declaration of Independence. Although Morris did much to restore his reputation in 1780 and 1781, the credit for obtaining these critical loans to "organize" the Bank of North America for approval by Congress in December 1781 should go to Henry or John Laurens and Thomas Paine more than to Robert Morris.

Paine bought his only house in 1783 on the corner of Farnsworth Avenue and Church Streets in Bordentown City, New Jersey, and he lived in it periodically until his death in 1809. This is the only place in the world where Paine purchased real estate.

''Rights of Man''

Having taken work as a clerk after his expulsion by Congress, Paine eventually returned to London in 1787, living a largely private life. However, his passion was again sparked by revolution, this time in France, which he visited in 1790. Edmund Burke, who had supported the American Revolution, did not likewise support the events taking place in France, and wrote the critical ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'', partially in response to a sermon by Richard Price, the radical minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church. Many pens rushed to defend the Revolution and the Dissenting clergyman, including Mary Wollstonecraft, who published ''A Vindication of the Rights of Men'' only weeks after the ''Reflections''. Paine wrote ''Rights of Man'', an abstract political tract critical of monarchies and European social institutions. He completed the text on January 29, 1791. On January 31, he gave the manuscript to publisher Joseph Johnson for publication on February 22. Meanwhile, government agents visited him, and, sensing dangerous political controversy, he reneged on his promise to sell the book on publication day; Paine quickly negotiated with publisher J.S. Jordan, then went to Paris, per William Blake's advice, leaving three good friends, William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis, and Thomas Holcroft, charged with concluding publication in Britain. The book appeared on March 13, three weeks later than scheduled, and sold well.

Undeterred by the government campaign to discredit him, Paine issued his ''Rights of Man, Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice'' in February 1792. It detailed a representative government with enumerated social programs to remedy the numbing poverty of commoners through progressive tax measures. Radically reduced in price to ensure unprecedented circulation, it was sensational in its impact and gave birth to reform societies. An indictment for seditious libel followed, for both publisher and author, while government agents followed Paine and instigated mobs, hate meetings, and burnings in effigy. The authorities aimed, with ultimate success, to chase Paine out of Great Britain. He was then tried ''in absentia'', found guilty though never executed.

In summer of 1792, he answered the sedition and libel charges thus: "If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy ... to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous ... let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb".

Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and was granted, along with Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and others, honorary French citizenship. Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas-de-Calais. He voted for the French Republic; but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying that he should instead be exiled to the United States: firstly, because of the way royalist France had come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly because of a moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings in particular. He participated to the Constitution Committee that drafted the Girondin constitutional project.

Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he was seen with increasing disfavor by the Montagnards who were now in power, and in particular by Robespierre. A decree was passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots was also deprived of his place). Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.

''The Age of Reason''

Before his arrest and imprisonment in France, knowing that he would probably be arrested and executed, Paine, following in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism, wrote the first part of ''The Age of Reason'', an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of deism, calling for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion. ''The Age of Reason'' critique on institutionalized religion resulted in only a brief upsurge in deistic thought in America, but would later result in Paine being derided by the public and abandoned by his friends. In his "Autobiographical Interlude," which is found in ''The Age of Reason'' between the first and second parts, Paine writes, "Thus far I had written on the December 28, 1793. In the evening I went to the Hotel Philadelphia ... About four in the morning I was awakened by a rapping at my chamber door; when I opened it, I saw a guard and the master of the hotel with them. The guard told me they came to put me under arrestation and to demand the key of my papers. I desired them to walk in, and I would dress myself and go with them immediately."

Being held in France, Paine protested and claimed that he was a citizen of America, which was an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great Britain, which was by that time at war with France. However, Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador to France, did not press his claim, and Paine later wrote that Morris had connived at his imprisonment. Paine thought that George Washington had abandoned him, and he was to quarrel with Washington for the rest of his life. Years later he wrote a scathing open letter to Washington, accusing him of private betrayal of their friendship and public hypocrisy as general and president, and concluding the letter by saying "the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any."

While in prison, Paine narrowly escaped execution. A guard walked through the prison placing a chalk mark on the doors of the prisoners who were due to be sent to the guillotine the next day. He placed a 4 on the door of Paine's cell, but Paine's door had been left open to let a breeze in, because Paine was seriously ill at the time. That night, his other three cell mates closed the door, thus hiding the mark inside the cell. The next day their cell was overlooked. "The Angel of Death" had passed over Paine. He kept his head and survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794).

Paine was released in November 1794 largely because of the work of the new American Minister to France, James Monroe, who successfully argued the case for Paine's American citizenship. In July 1795, he was re-admitted into the Convention, as were other surviving Girondins. Paine was one of only three députés to oppose the adoption of the new 1795 constitution, because it eliminated universal suffrage, which had been proclaimed by the Montagnard Constitution of 1793.

In 1797, Tom Paine lived in Paris with Nicholas Bonneville and his wife, Margaret. Paine, as well as Bonneville's other controversial guests, aroused the suspicions of authorities. Bonneville hid the Royalist Antoine Joseph Barruel-Beauvert at his home and employed him as a proofreader. Beauvert had been outlawed following the coup of 18 Fructidor on September 4, 1797. Paine believed that America, under John Adams, had betrayed revolutionary France. Bonneville was then briefly jailed for comparing Napoleon Bonaparte to Oliver Cromwell, in his publication 'The Well Informed of 19 Brumaire Year VIII,' and his presses were confiscated, which meant financial ruin.

In 1800, still under police surveillance, Bonneville took refuge with his father in Evreux. Paine stayed on with him, helping Bonneville with the burden of translating the Covenant Sea. The same year, Paine purportedly had a meeting with Napoleon. Napoleon claimed he slept with a copy of ''Rights of Man'' under his pillow and went so far as to say to Paine that "a statue of gold should be erected to you in every city in the universe." Paine discussed with Napoleon how best to invade England and in December 1797 wrote two essays, one of which was pointedly named ''Observations on the Construction and Operation of Navies with a Plan for an Invasion of England and the Final Overthrow of the English Government'', in which he promoted the idea to finance 1000 gunboats to carry a French invading army across the English Channel. In 1804 Paine returned to the subject, writing ''To the People of England on the Invasion of England'' advocating the idea.

On noting Napoleon's progress towards dictatorship, he condemned him as: "the completest charlatan that ever existed". Thomas Paine remained in France until 1802, returning to the United States only at President Jefferson's invitation.

Later years

In 1802 or 1803, Tom Paine left France for the United States, paying passage also for Bonneville's wife, Marguerite Brazier and their three sons, seven year old Benjamin, Louis, and Thomas, of whom Paine was godfather. Paine returned to the US in the early stages of the Second Great Awakening and a time of great political partisanship. The ''Age of Reason'' gave ample excuse for the religiously devout to dislike him, and the Federalists attacked him for his ideas of government stated in ''Common Sense,'' for his association with the French Revolution, and for his friendship with President Jefferson. Also still fresh in the minds of the public was his ''Letter to Washington,'' published six years before his return.

Upon his return to America, Paine penned 'On the Origins of Freemasonry.' Nicholas Bonneville printed the essay in French. It was not printed in English until 1810, when Marguerite posthumously published his essay, which she had culled from among his papers, as a pamphlet containing an edited version wherein she omitted his references to the Christian religion. The document was published in English in its entirety in New York in 1918.

Brazier took care of Paine at the end of his life and buried him on his death on June 8, 1809. In his will, Paine left the bulk of his estate to Marguerite, including 100 acres (40.5 ha) of his farm so she could maintain and educate Benjamin and his brother Thomas. In 1810, The fall of Napoleon finally allowed Bonneville to rejoin his wife in the United States where he remained for four years before returning to Paris to open a bookshop.

Death

Paine died at the age of 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City on the morning of June 8, 1809. Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location.

After his death, Paine's body was brought to New Rochelle, but no Christian church would receive it for burial, so his remains were buried under a walnut tree on his farm. In 1819, the English agrarian radical journalist William Cobbett dug up his bones and transported them back to England, with plans for English democrats to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but this never came to pass. The bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over twenty years later, but were later lost. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although down the years various people have claimed to own parts of Paine's remains, such as his skull and right hand.

At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the ''New York Citizen'', which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. The writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:

Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.

Political views

Thomas Paine developed his natural justice beliefs in childhood, while listening to a mob jeering and attacking the town folk being punished in the Thetford stocks. He may also have been influenced by his Quaker father. In ''The Age of Reason'' his treatise supporting deism he says:

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers ... though I revere their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at [their] conceit; ... if the taste of a Quaker [had] been consulted at the Creation, what a silent and drab-colored Creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

Later, his encounters with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas made a deep impression. The ability of the Iroquois to live in harmony with nature while achieving a democratic decision making process, helped him refine his thinking on how to organize society.

In the second part of ''The Age of Reason'', about his sickness in prison, he says: "... I was seized with a fever, that, in its progress, had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered, with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of 'The Age of Reason'". This quotation encapsulates its gist:

The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now and so help me God.

Paine is often credited with writing "African Slavery in America", the first article proposing the emancipation of African slaves and the abolition of slavery. It was published on March 8, 1775 in the ''Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser'' (aka ''The Pennsylvania Magazine'' and ''American Museum''). Citing a lack of evidence that Paine was the author of this anonymously published essay, some scholars (Eric Foner and Alfred Owen Aldridge) no longer consider this one of his works. Others believe it bears the hallmarks of Paine's rhetorical style with its Biblical cadences and plain language. By contrast, John Nichols speculates that his "fervent objections to slavery" led to his exclusion from power during the early years of the Republic.

His last, great pamphlet, ''Agrarian Justice'', he published in winter of 1795, further developing the ideas in the ''Rights of Man'', about how land ownership separated the majority of people from their rightful, natural inheritance, and means of independent survival. Contemporarily, his proposal is deemed a form of basic Income Guarantee. The US Social Security Administration recognizes ''Agrarian Justice'' as the first American proposal for an old-age pension; per ''Agrarian Justice'':

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity ... [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

Note that £10 and £15 would be worth about £800 and £1,200 when adjusted for inflation.

Religious views

About religion, ''The Age of Reason'' says:

Though there is no evidence he was himself a Freemason, Paine also wrote "An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry" (1803–1805), about the Bible being allegorical myth describing astrology:

He described himself as deist, saying:

How different is [Christianity] to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.

and again, in ''The Age of Reason:''

Legacy

Thomas Paine's writing greatly influenced his contemporaries and, especially, the American revolutionaries. His books provoked only a brief upsurge in Deism in America, but in the long term inspired philosophic and working-class radicals in the UK, and US liberals, libertarians, feminists, democratic socialists, social democrats, anarchists, freethinkers, and progressives often claim him as an intellectual ancestor. Paine's critique on institutionalized religion and advocation of rational thinking influenced many British freethinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as William Cobbett, George Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh and Bertrand Russell.

Many of Paine's works have also been an inspiration for rapidly expanding secular humanism. His Deism and his writings on Deism have inspired the creation of the World Union of Deists and the writing of the book ''Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You''.

The quote "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" is widely but incorrectly attributed to Paine. This can be found nowhere in his published works.

Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, reports that Lincoln wrote a defense of Paine's deism in 1835, and friend Samuel Hill burned it to save Lincoln's political career. Historian Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln's papers, said Paine had a strong influence on Lincoln's style: :No other writer of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Jefferson, parallels more closely the temper or gist of Lincoln's later thought. In style, Paine above all others affords the variety of eloquence which, chastened and adapted to Lincoln's own mood, is revealed in Lincoln's formal writings.

Edison

The inventor Thomas Edison said:

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.

Memorials

The first and longest standing memorial to Thomas Paine is the carved and inscribed 12 foot marble column in New Rochelle, New York organized and funded by publisher, educator and reformer Gilbert Vale (1791–1866) and raised in 1839 by the American sculptor and architect James Frazee—The Thomas Paine Monument (see image below). New Rochelle is also the original site of Paine's 300 acre farm, confiscated by the State of New York from the Tory and monarchist Frederick Davoe and awarded to Paine for his services in the American Revolution. The same site is the home of the Thomas Paine Museum, whose holdings—the subject of a sell-off controversy—were temporarily relocated to the New York Historical Society and are now safely and more permanently archived in the Iona College Library.

In England a statue of Paine, quill pen and inverted copy of ''Rights of Man'' in hand, stands in King Street, Thetford, Norfolk, his birth place. Moreover, in Thetford, the Sixth form is named after him. Thomas Paine was ranked #34 in the ''100 Greatest Britons'' 2002 extensive Nationwide poll conducted by the BBC

Bronx Community College includes Paine in its Hall of Fame of Great Americans, and there are statues of Paine in Morristown and Bordentown, New Jersey, and in the Parc Montsouris, in Paris.

Also in Paris, there is a plaque in the street where he lived from 1797 to 1802, that says: "Thomas PAINE / 1737–1809 / Englishman by birth / American by adoption / French by decree".

Yearly, between July 4 and 14, the Lewes Town Council in the United Kingdom celebrates the life and work of Thomas Paine.

In the early 1990s, largely through the efforts of citizen activist David Henley of Virginia, legislation (S.Con.Res 110, and H.R. 1628) was introduced in the 102nd Congress by ideological opposites Sen. Steve Symms (R-ID) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY). With over 100 formal letters of endorsement by US and foreign historians, philosophers, and organizations, including the Thomas Paine National Historical Society, the legislation garnered 78 original co-sponsors in the Senate and 230 original co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, and was consequently passed by both houses unanimous consent. In October, 1992 the legislation was signed into law (PL102-407 & PL102-459) by President George H.W. Bush authorizing the construction, using private funds, of a memorial to Thomas Paine in "Area 1" of the grounds of the US Capitol. , the memorial has not yet been built.

In popular culture

Jack Shepherd's stage play ''In Lambeth'' dramatised a visit by Thomas Paine to the Lambeth home of William and Catherine Blake in 1789, first performed at the East Dulwich Tavern in London in July 1989. The play was later adapted for television in the BBC Two ''Encounters'' series - which featured similar fictionalised meetings between historical figures - and was first broadcast on 4 July 1993. It was directed by Sebastian Graham-Jones, and featured Bob Peck as Paine, Mark Rylance as William, and Lesley Claire O'Neill as Katherine (sic).

See also

American Enlightenment

American philosophy

American Revolution

Asset-based egalitarianism

Common Sense

Contributions to liberal theory

Deism

English philosophy

Founding Fathers of the United States

Liberalism

Liberty

List of American philosophers

List of British philosophers

Political philosophy

Society of the Friends of Truth

United States Bill of Rights

United States Declaration of Independence

United States history

References

;Notes

;Bibliography

Aldridge, A. Owen, 1959. ''Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine.'' Lippincott. Regarded by British authorities as the standard biography.

Aldridge, A. Owen, 1984. ''Thomas Paine's American Ideology''. University of Delaware Press.

Ayer, A. J., 1988. ''Thomas Paine''. University of Chicago Press.

Bailyn, Bernard, 1990. "Common Sense", in Bailyn, ''Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence''. Alfred A. Knopf.

Bernstein, R. B. "Review Essay: Rediscovering Thomas Paine". ''New York Law School Law Review,'' 1994 – valuable blend of historiographical essay and biographical/analytical treatment.

Butler, Marilyn, 1984. ''Burke Paine and Godwin and the Revolution Controversy''.

Claeys, Gregory, 1989. ''Thomas Paine, Social and Political Thought''. Unwin Hyman. Excellent analysis of Paine's thought.

Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1892. ''The Life of Thomas Paine'', 2 vols. G.P. Putnam's Sons. Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Facsimile. Long hailed as the definitive biography, and still valuable.

Fast, Howard, 1946. ''Citizen Tom Paine'' (historical novel, though sometimes mistaken as biography).

Ferguson, Robert A. "The Commonalities of Common Sense", ''William and Mary Quarterly,'' July 2000, Vol. 57#3 pp 465–504 in JSTOR

Foner, Eric, 1976. ''Tom Paine and Revolutionary America''. Oxford University Press. The standard monograph treating Paine's thought and work with regard to America.

Foot, Michael, and Kramnick, Isaac, 1987. ''The Thomas Paine Reader''. Penguin Classics.

Hawke, David Freeman, 1974. ''Paine''. Regarded by many American authorities as the standard biography.

Hitchens, Christopher, 2006. ''Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography''.

Ingersoll, Robert G., 1892, "Thomas Paine," ''North American Review''.

Kates, Gary, 1989, "From Liberalism to Radicalism: Tom Paine's Rights of Man", ''Journal of the History of Ideas'': 569–587.

Kaye, Harvey J., 2005. ''Thomas Paine and the Promise of America''. Hill and Wang.

Keane, John, 1995. ''Tom Paine: A Political Life''. London. One of the most valuable recent studies.

Larkin, Edward, 2005. ''Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution.'' Cambridge University Press.

Lessay, Jean. L'américain de la Convention, Thomas Paine: Professeur de révolutions. Paris, éditions Perrin, 1987, 241 p.

Lewis, Joseph, 1947, "Thomas Paine: The Author of the Declaration of Independence". Freethought Association Press Assn.: New York.

Nelson, Craig, 2006. ''Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations''. Viking. ISBN 0-670-03788-5.

Paine, Thomas (Foner, Eric, editor), 1993. ''Writings.'' Library of America. Authoritative and scholarly edition containing ''Common Sense,'' the essays comprising the ''American Crisis'' series, ''Rights of Man,'' ''The Age of Reason,'' ''Agrarian Justice,'' and selected briefer writings, with authoritative texts and careful annotation.

Paine, Thomas (Foner, Philip S., editor), 1944. ''The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine,'' 2 volumes. Citadel Press. We badly need a complete edition of Paine's writings on the model of Eric Foner's edition for the Library of America, but until that goal is achieved, Philip Foner's two-volume edition is a serviceable substitute. Volume I contains the major works, and volume II contains shorter writings, both published essays and a selection of letters, but confusingly organized; in addition, Foner's attributions of writings to Paine have come in for some criticism in that Foner may have included writings that Paine edited but did not write and omitted some writings that later scholars have attributed to Paine.

Powell, David, 1985. ''Tom Paine, The Greatest Exile''. Hutchinson.

Vincent, Bernard, 2005. ''The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the age of revolutions''.

Williams, Walton, July, 1994. "The Declaration of Independence: Was it Written by Thomas Paine?" The Crooked Lake Review (Reprinted from the Hammondsport Herald, July 6, 1906), crookedlakereview.com

Wheeler, Daniel, ''Life and Writings of Thomas Paine,'' Vincent & Parke, 1908.

''The Popular Encyclopedia'' London: Blackie & Sons 1875. "Thomas Paine"

External links

The Thomas Paine Society

Who was Thomas Paine?

Essays on the Religious and Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine's Memorial

Thomas Paine Quotations

Books of Our Time: Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey Kaye (video)

Take a video tour of Thomas Paine's birthplace

Office location while in Alford

Thomas Paine-Passionate Pamphleteer for Liberty by Jim Powell

Thomas Paine on Paper Money, 1786

Thomas Paine, Liberty's Hated Torchbearer

Lesson plan – ''Common Sense'': The Rhetoric of Popular Democracy

Books of Our Time: Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (video)

Correspondence between Paine and Samuel Adams regarding the charge of ''infidelity''

One Life: Thomas Paine, the Radical Founding Father exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

;Works

Complete Works of Thomas Paine

Deistic and Religious Works of Thomas Paine

The theological works of Thomas Paine

The theological works of Thomas Paine to which are appended the profession of faith of a savoyard vicar by J.J. Rousseau

''Common Sense'' by Thomas Paine; HTML format, indexed by section

Rights of Man book on Google books (full-view)

Listen to Common Sense at Americana Phonic. AAC audio format

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