Nation Builder ( First started in Jan 09)

Long may people and their leaders throughout the world revere and respect the dashing young President Obama and somehow cling to the belief that he will inspire people in his own land and others enough to overcome a crisis which, aided and abetted by governments and FSA equivalents the world over, built almost entirely on the immoral greed of the few and the compliance of the many, is quite unprecedented in modern history.

I am a musician now living in Lewes, East Sussex and have become extremely proud of the town and its close association with Tom Paine; truly, it turns out, a founder of the ideas of liberty and dignity in the US Constitution and governance of nations, a ‘sugarfoot’ hero of the US Revolution and radical Englishman who although died penniless, his free-thinking ideas seem to have comprehensively underpinned and inspired the political philosophy of the free world’s charismatic new champion.

Paine is spiritually up there as if on Mount Rushmore, with the likes of Lincoln, Martin Luther King and now Obama in the sea–change of political thought now recognised as key for the survival & future prosperity of our planet and its people

Adopting much of the imagery, simple egalitarianism and soaring prose of Paine, like his forbear George Washington who ordered that Tom’s words be read to his men in December 1776 before crossing the Delaware at a crucial turning point in the American revolutionary war, Obama’s frequent invocation of the words of Lewes’s prodigal son – particularly in his seriously measured inaugural address stirs my heart – and I am sure that of many other Englishmen and women with universal pride.

Sadly, pride gives way to deep shame & incredulity however when one witnesses the increasingly catastrophic and morally bankrupt manner that the present (unelected) incumbent and previous mendacious tenant of 10 Downing Street have all but destroyed the reputation and many of the ideals of our own country, which now at least financially even appear to threaten our very way of life. The latest revelations of sleaze and tawdry money-grubbing permeating even the highest chambers of governance in our land are but the latest in a long sad catalog of events that by now do not even have to be listed.

Indeed I am sure that future historians and the UK public will nod in wonder and scratch their heads at how this generation allowed New Labour and particularly Gordon Brown to cling on to office for so long. Why aren’t we marching in the streets like Tehran?

So rather than sucking up to the youthful new President* and vying for position and the entirely sound bite-driven superficial prestige of “Who will be the first European leader to get the magic ‘O’ phone call?” (No doubt desperately hoping some of the zeitgeist and youthful magic would, Disney-like, adorn itself on the craggy worn-out ‘son of the Manse’s’ features) Would it not, in the first place have been preferable for the British prime minister to genuinely adopt the simple and authentic concepts of the very same Englishman who so obviously has inspired Obama and everyone else around the world?

(*First written in January 09 and subsequently edited)

Why did it have to be Obama and not Brown that rediscovered the near-immortal, inspired terminology of a true British hero - and at a time when those of us in Lewes, England and the world really need to hear it?

“When the new President says that his election proves “The dream of our founders is alive in our time,” it is Paine’s dream of which he speaks. That dream may not be fully realized. But it is alive; more, indeed, today than at any time in the history of a land that might yet begin our world over again”

One can only hope that Paine’s vision for England is also alive, and that he will not remain forever a prophet without honour in his own country.

“When the Pennsylvania Assembly considered the formal abolition of slavery in 1779, it was Paine who authored the preamble to the proposal. Paine’s fervent objections to slavery led to his exclusion from the inner circles of American power in the first years of the republic. He died a pauper. Only history restored the man–and his vision. And on this day, this remarkable day, Thomas Paine is fully redeemed.

“I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.”
Barack Obama, 18 January 2009

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine,