America seems to have forgotten one of it’s most important founding father: Thomas Paine. We was an insightful man and he has written many pamphlets which were the basis for later events. Most important he wrote for the common men - and not for an educated aristocratic few. And he was a bloody liberal and an anarchist (in it’s original sense).

Especially his ‘The Age of Reason’ should be nailed on every Christian-right-wingers forehead. Here Thomas Paine rejected any notion of organized religion as well as the bible. Although he considered himself a believer - he could very well do without a church or any organization around his relationship to God.

Paine himself was an all around genius, he worked as an inventor as well as a writer and sort of early global activist. Although he supported the french revolution - who dared to oppose the execution of King Louis XVI before the french assembly - and was promptly thrown into jail. The British Crown was highly paranoid about him as well and feared he might start a revolution there as well.

His other great works included ‘Common Sense’ and ‘Rights of Man’. He proposed the name United States of America.

Paine was later shunned for his rejection of Christian ideas and concepts - and died a lonely death in New York. Hardly anyone remembered him for a long time. Thanks to Thomas Edison and an enlightened few his memory was kept alive.