A review of Glenn Beck's Common Sense - Worth the read

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TQOV2Z0F32X2/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

A few selected quotes:

Beck uses this book - and Paine's name - to criticize "Progressivism," blaming it for much of what ails the country. Sadly, this is a complete distortion of Paine's legacy. While the extent of most Americans' knowledge of Paine is "he wrote Common Sense, I teach his work in class every year. I use "The Crisis" and selections from "The Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason." If you want to understand Paine and his vision for America, you should read them. Beck doesn't understand Paine, but he does want to use the credibility of "The Founding Fathers" to promote an anti-government message.

From what I know of American history, Thomas Paine would have been appalled by Beck associating their two ideologies, and he would have bitch-slapped Beck. And Beck would have deserved it.

Awesome!

Paine loathed men like Beck, ranting blind belligerent and arrogant tools of the Powers that Be who deluded the masses with buzzwords and terror. Beck would have to go into surgery to have Paine's boot removed from his netherregions, that is if he survived the beating that followed. My prediction is that he wouldn't need it, because there would be nothing left but hair, teeth and eyeballs when Paine got finished.

.
.
.
Proposed system

Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor, which could be considered as the precursor of the modern idea of citizen's income or basic income. The money would be raised by taxing all direct inheritances at 10%, and "indirect" inheritances - those not going to close relations - at a somewhat higher rate; this would, he estimated, raise around £5,700,000 per year in England.<2>

Around two-thirds of the fund would be spent on pension payments of £10 per year to every person over the age of fifty, which Paine had taken as his average adult life expectancy, with most of the remainder allocated to making fixed payments of £15 to every man and woman on reaching the age of twenty-one, legal majority. The small remainder would then be able to be used for paying pensions to "the lame and blind".<3> For context, the average weekly wage of an agricultural labourer was around 9 shillings, which would mean an annual income of about £23 for an able-bodied man working throughout the year.<4>
.
.
.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice

pnorman

Just edged out, "The wit of Joe the Plumber".