As a phalanx of new war memorials rise in Washington, D.C., over the next few years, including long overdue recognition of Native American and African American veterans, the American Revolution's foremost patriot still remains locked out of our nation's capital. 

Amazingly, there is still no statue or memorial in Washington to Thomas Paine, the immigrant writer and soldier who not only first inscribed the "United States of America" in print on June 29, 1776, but galvanized the American Revolution in one of the darkest times in our nation's history with his writings. 

“Without the pen of the author of Common Sense,” founding father John Adams begrudgingly admitted, “the sword of (George) Washington would have been raised in vain.” Adams added later to Thomas Jefferson, “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine."

It's time for our nation's capital to ascribe this fact in stone. In fact, never have we needed Paine's vision of defending a fledgling American democracy more than now.

While numerous statues of treasonous Confederate leaders still stare down bystanders in the U.S. Capitol, Paine's enduring challenge to our nation to resist duplicitous authority, uphold inalienable freedoms of speech and the press, recognize our country as a sanctuary for refugees, and "reinvent" the world in our own times, remains as vital as in his own Revolutionary times. ...