Beacon January 2026

Scan of cover of Common Sense, the pamphlet.

How Thomas Paine Made the Case for an Independent and Democratic America

Beacon January 2026

Common Sense, published in January 1776, is well known for its strong advocacy of independence from Britain. Less known, but of vital importance, is Paine’s insistence that it is essential to create republics in which the people as a whole—not any one person— are sovereign. Ridiculing the unwritten English “Constitution” that all American factions then

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