[warmfuzzykitten]

To be sure, the Declaration of Independence has a litany of wrongs committed by the English king, but that is hardly what it is remembered for, and "blamed monarchy on the Jews" seems an unfair summary of Common Sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

[rkk3]

> "blamed monarchy on the Jews" seems an unfair summary of Common Sense.

"for the quiet and rural lives of the first Patriarchs have a snappy something in them, which vanishes when we come to the history of Jewish royalty" [1]

"Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry." [1]

Those are just the first I found, take a look yourself.

Common Sense was "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era."[2]. This is a nice way of saying he was a propagandist. The work is reminiscent of "Yellow Journalism" or modern day political conspiracy theories. Another theory of his, that really got the crowd going, was that the King was a secret catholic.

> the Declaration of Independence has a litany of wrongs committed by the English king, but that is hardly what it is remembered for

It is remembered for the PreAmble, which is why I thought it was worth mentioning. The historian makes the claim that most of the charges/grievances in the body of the document were knowingly false/without merit in order to 'pad the brief'.

[1] https://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/sense3.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

[warmfuzzykitten]

Well, read on a little. The text quoted clearly blames monarchy on the Heathens. Paine then recounts the history of monarchy in the Old Testament, with an example of god Himself speaking against it as a form of idolatry, his point being not that the Jews are the source of monarchy but that scripture is plainly opposed to it. Concluding that section, Paine writes "And a man hath good reason to believe that there is as much of kingcraft as priestcraft in withholding the scripture from the public in popish countries. For monarchy in every instance is the popery of government." As a good 18th-century Protestant, Paine was of course against "popery", yet the historian doesn't claim Paine blamed monarchy on the Catholics.

The book itself was well-reviewed, but the takeaways are a bit disturbing.