A great moment for the author, Stephen MacLean, his inaugural article in The American Thinker: Paine the Economic Royalist whose cryptic title hides a truly important issue, Thomas Paine’s unknown quest for sound money. You cannot make an economy work without a currency that holds its value. The article is about Paine’s efforts back at the end of the eighteenth century to do what he could to ensure the US had a stable currency that was not in the control of government. Here is Paine quoted directly:

Money, when considered as the fruit of many years industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow’s dowry and children’s portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.

Combines what I like best, an examination of a modern issue through the eyes of someone who lived two hundred years ago. There is a great deal to be learned from what both MacLean and Paine have written.