Nation owes much to Thomas Paine's beliefs

Nation owes much to Thomas Paine's beliefs
EDITOR:
Thank you for including William C. Kashatus' article on the significance of Tom Paine's impact upon the formation of the American nation; Kashatus should have mentioned that Paine was a protege of Benjamin Franklin who personally arranged for Paine's relocating in Phila delphia, but he is quite correct that Paine's activity counted much more towards American independence than the political theorizing of that effete snob, the mendacious and hypocritical Thomas Jefferson.
Paine's contribution to freedom and human rights was not limited to "Common Sense" and the morale-boosting Crisis essays: Kashatus neglected to mention that it was Paine who coined the official name, "the United States of America." He returned to England and managed to disingratiate himself further with the establishment by pointing out that the British government was bogus since it had no written constitution.
His pamphlet, "The Rights of Man," defends the objectives of both the American and French Revolutions: "That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to do," is a statement that sums up the full rationale of representative government on all levels.
Subversive ideas like this motivated Paine to immigrate to France where he again got involved with articulating those ideas necessary to justify the French people's quest for freedom. He demonstrated his courage by opposing the Reign of Terror and the executions of the French aristocracy (on humane grounds), and as a result found himself awaiting his turn at the guillotine. In the French prison, he wrote "The Age of Reason," an explanation of his opposition to government-sanctioned and/or national established religions; unfortunately this work was misinterpreted by some, and generations thereafter of uneducated American "livery stable" self-proclaimed "free thinkers," i.e. agnostics and atheists, saw it as their own official tract and manifesto of disbelief.
Paine was never an atheist -- he was a lifelong Quaker, but sadly 200 years of self-proclaimed pulpit spokespersons who have never read "The Age of Reason" have been denouncing Thomas Paine as a "filthy little atheist."
My personal way of counteracting this is to go to Colonial Williamsburg where I encounter Mr.Thomas Jefferson and rebuke him to his face for his womanizing, slaveholding, and his little hobby of editing and rewriting the Holy Scriptures.
A final point of Paine's relevance to "the course of human events": after the American Revolution, it was Common Sense that factored into General Washington's decision that neither he nor anybody else would ever be "King of America ... in England a king hath little more to do than to make trouble... ."
R.C. BECK
Mineral Ridge
Zoning unconstitutional, takes away human rights
EDITOR:
If zoning is unconstitutional, why are some citizens of Brookfield Township working to abolish the United States Constitution, leaving tyrants in control?
Zoning will end your human rights to be different. When your thoughts don't conform, the land grab for your property is on. Someone is always willing to take what you own or thought you owned.
These tyrants force you to live under their form of utopia or they extort your property. I'm talking about the extortion of Albert Bacon's property in Hartford Township.
Has America become a nation of corrupt zoning laws to enhance thieves and robbers? If you don't fight to stop these tyrants now, you'll be fighting to keep the bulldozer off your doorstep.
Someone else controlling land you own is a system of tyranny. Love and help thy neighbor and your self. Don't give tyrants an unconstitutional blank check for corruption.
DAVID CUSTER
Masury