Letter

To the Editors:

The forum on the American Revolution in the April 2012 issue offers a fascinating discussion of the meaning and significance of the rhetoric of liberty. Historicizing the concept of liberty can only improve our understanding of the founding era. Yet I found it telling that one of the most potent forces in the transformation of the use of liberty—Thomas Paine with his Common Sense and The Rights of Man—is nowhere mentioned in the forum. Paine well knew "society as an order of ranks," about which the contributors agree, but he historicized that order and its repressive nature for thousands of appreciative readers while creating a compelling new vision of liberty's scope.