With the United States preparing to mark 250 years since independence, a January 2, 2026 opinion essay in The Nation argues that Thomas Paine’s anti-monarchical, egalitarian message should be central to the anniversary observances, casting it as a rebuttal to modern political and economic power concentrated among elites.
The United States is set to observe the 250th anniversary of independence in 2026, a milestone that has revived arguments about how the country should frame its founding story.
In a January 2, 2026 opinion essay in The Nation, writer John Nichols calls for making the semiquincentennial a “Year of Thomas Paine,” pointing to the Revolutionary-era pamphleteer as a symbol of popular resistance to both monarchy and concentrated wealth. Nichols describes Paine as a figure who helped rally support for independence and who later criticized what he viewed as elite power in America.
Nichols contrasts Paine’s politics with what he portrays as contemporary movements advocating “capitalism without constraint,” Christian nationalism and other forms of nationalist or expansionist politics—labeling them modern “Tories” and arguing they echo the kind of deference to monarchical authority that independence-era activists rejected.
The essay also draws on founding-era language to underscore a theory of government rooted in popular sovereignty, quoting the Declaration of Independence’s premise that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and that people may change a government that becomes destructive of their rights.
Nichols highlights Paine’s attacks on hereditary monarchy in Common Sense. Paine wrote that the origins of kingship could often be traced to violence and plunder, describing the first of modern kings as “nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang.” In the same work, Paine also argued that “one honest man” was worth more than “all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”
To support a broader argument that the founding generation feared entrenched privilege, Nichols cites James Madison’s later warning about corporations. In an 1827 letter to James K. Paulding, Madison wrote that incorporated companies “may in particular cases, be useful,” but “are at best a necessary evil only,” adding that “monopolies and perpetuities” were “objects of just abhorrence.”
The essay also invokes Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, which contains the phrase “wall of separation between Church & State,” to argue against efforts to define the United States as a Christian nation.
Nichols concludes by quoting another passage from Common Sense in which Paine urged readers to oppose oppression: “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!” Nichols argues that the message should inform modern debates about democracy, rights and power as the country heads into its next 250 years.
