Why should I care about Thomas Paine?

While reading sentence after sentence of seemingly never-ending torture, I started to ponder a few things. Why are students required to read this junk? I mean to me "Common Sense" just sounded like a bunch of common sense. How am I supposed to know if Thomas Paine was truly a patriot or a master of propaganda at the time?     Maybe I'm just annoyed that we're given a little bit of information about these authors, and then we are expected to actually care about their writings. Perhaps if I use this blog assignment to hopefully find out more about Paine, then I'll care. Is that not the biggest nose you've ever seen on a human being?

Paine was a white man born in the eighteenth century, and he was anti-slavery. Now that's definitely a unique trait of the time. Even "The Great" General Washington owned slaves. (I use that sarcastically, because history shows us that Washington was a terrible military commander.) At twelve years of age, Paine had failed out of school. Paine also failed as a soldier in the continental army, but he was very influential in motivating the other troops. Paine was poisoned by his brilliance. Far ahead of the thinkers of his time, Paine was frequently criticized and even imprisoned once for his outspoken original views. At a time when most of the world was under the rule of kings, Paine spoke out against monarchies. Back when the church was never questioned, Paine questioned it.(http://www.ushistory.org/paine/) (http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/paine.html)

During the time of our revolution, troops did not fight during the winter. Armies would shack up for the winter. When the American cause seemed pointless after a series of defeats, Paine's "The Crisis" rallied the troops for an unheard of winter battle. Below is the famous painting of Washington and his men heading to battle.

Paine was an outspoken deist. He would die a lonely man due to this. Today it would be less serious to write about religious views. There will always be devout extremist though. Men who will never respect another man's beliefs, although neither offer concrete proof. In Paine's time, almost everyone alive was an extremist. It's surprising that church officials didn't behead him an scatter his limbs to the four corners of the country. Yeah, they did worse. I must admit that I now partially understand why I should care about this influential man.(http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/B/tpaine/paine.htm)