Quote:I too am inconsistent. When I was young I was a socialist. But, don't hold me to my writings then. :)Tom Paine was consistent enough. You're just reading him through the filter of your own beliefs about what constitutes vassalage.
To him, that meant being ruled by a Monarch, in whose government you had no voice. To you, it apparently means taxes.
(Edit: Perhaps you misunderstood. I don't mean Tom Paine believed in these things early in his life. Quite the contrary, what I linked you was published when he was sixty. I mean he believed in these things before belief in them was widespread.)
-Jester