Thomas Paine is least bad.
He was an abolitionist and the other founding fathers never forgave him for it.
"Patriots": You can't just judge the Founding Fathers by the standards of today!
Thomas Paine: Judges the Founding Fathers by the standards of his day, agrees with the people today.
What they really mean is "You can't just judge me by the standards of tomorrow!"
yeah the UK banned slavery like 20 years after the American revolution abolition was very much a hot issue back then
Probably not, Paine was a radlib who went on to an elected position in the first French Republic.
He was elected to Fr*nch government without ever having to learn to speak the Fr*nch language, which I think is pretty based.
When we call people libertarians, we're saying that they only care about freedom for themselves to do whatever they want, especially at the expense of others. When I say that Paine was a radlib, I mean he was thoroughly anti-monarchy and anti-slavery.
It's difficult to translate every single historical political position into modern terms, but he had solid political standards that he acted on. He easily could have been a wealthy spin doctor for bourgeois Americans, but he was sidelined right after the revolution for sticking to his principles and advocating for a more radical freedom than slaveowners were willing to impart.
You might be thinking of this:
In response to the private sale of royal (or common) lands, Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax land owners once per generation to pay for the needs of those who have no land. Some consider this a precursor to the modern idea of citizen's dividend 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. He estimated that to 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 50, which Paine had taken as his average adult life expectancy.
Most of the remainder would be used to make fixed payments of £15 to every man and woman on reaching the age of 21, then the age of legal majority.
The small remainder of the money raised that was still unused would 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]
Basically, land owners would have to pay rent to the community for the land they own, which would then be used as a sort of universal basic income.
You might be thinking about Adam Smith, the "father of capitalism", who did hate landlords.
How tf do you support capitalism and hate landlords
That's like supporting computers while hating semiconductors
He wasn’t really the father of capitalism. He more or less wrote about how emerging capitalism of the day was better than mercantilism. He influenced Marx a lot and was pretty good.
owned over 600 slaves, most of any president but I'm having trouble finding if any of the other signers of the declaration or constitution drafters had more
Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin pretty good.
Thomas Jefferson bad.
Ben Franklin was an abolitionist and so much less bad than most other founding fathers, but still had pretty wild views including some that are problematic. Among other things, he:
- Once wrote an essay about farting
- Urged a young man to seek out MILFs/GILFs in his area
- Believed that everyone who wasn't Anglo-Saxon was racially inferior, including the French, Swedes, and Germans, who he referred to as "swarthy"
Yeah, the 3rd is the only truly problematic one. The public support for farting and MILFs would probably win him a lot of fans these days. He also supposedly brewed some pretty decent beer.
Benjamin Rush wanted a department of peace and probably thought the most highly of black people and women (which doesn’t say too much considering the group but still)
he's cool because he made torture machines with all the good intentions of improving the field of psychiatry
