". . . a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.” --Thomas Paine, 1776

 

Readers’ Forum

Terre Haute Tribune Star, Dec. 24, 2025

King sounds far too familiar

“The American Crisis,” by Thomas Paine, was published December 17, 1776. Here we have wisdom from our 250th anniversary of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a pursuit by a nation in which “all men [and women] are created equal.”

If you’ve studied the American Revolutionary era, or watched the six part PBS Ken Burns and associates documentary, you are well aware what we are celebrating did not come without sacrifice. Nor, we regularly learn, are such worthy and necessary human aspirations easy to sustain and grow.

Paine, the firey author of Revolutionary war pamphlets and a soldier in the field, put it best. In words we have all heard and remember from our history classes, “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Read on in this brilliant work. It was published for 2 pence, not a single cent going to its dedicated author. In it, you will find this statement of Paine’s courage and his estimate of a king who subverted and

barred the way to the high ideals of the American Revolution.

That king sounds far too familiar to us today. “Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.”

— Gary Daily Terre Haute