I would be hard pressed to pick my favoriteAmerican political/philosophical writer and by default would have to go with Paine.

I would also say that no white American has said anything very remarkable (oratorically speaking, mind you) since Lincoln died, because as far as I can tell he was about the last mainstream politician to write his own speech.

Duty,  Honor, Country.

Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

Well, to each his own, but I would be remiss if I did not say that Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech is widely regarded among many historians as one of the worst speeches given by a prominent Black leader as it basically provided the South with cover to implement Jim Crow segregation.  I think it's an awful speech in the way Washington turns a blind eye to lynching, segregation and racial injustice in exchange for a groveling offer to provide cheap labor in exchange for a little blood money.

1.  Everybody else can be shy, but I don't think there's any topping Martn Luther King.

2.  It used to be Richard Wright, but I've grown to develop a new respect for the way James Baldwin honestly and forthrightly addressed this nation's struggle with race and racism.

    He believes that, by steadfastly grasping for the american dream, black Americans will gain acceptance in this country.  By polarizing issues and breeding discontent blacks will sit in social limbo.  I happen to agree with him 100%.
    If you pull up the proverbial bootstraps, put your head down and work hard you can go places in this country.

Booker T. Washington was looking 100 years in thr future for his people.  He was wise enough to know things would not change in 10-20 or even 30 years.
    That sort of social upheaval has never happened in history.  His was the right message.  Martin Luther King had the same disagreement with Malcolm X (another brilliant speaker) 100 years later.  Malcolm X sought to polarize and King sought an amalgamation of cultures akin to the Washington philosophy.

  Either way, I think the speech is brilliantly done.  It offers a great analogy (which is the crux of the debate about his meaning) and then goes on to appeal perfectly to the wealthy whites who were his audience.  He said exactly what needed to be said to convince wealthy whites that blacks could be a boon to the nation.

It used to be Richard Wright, but I've grown to develop a new respect for the way James Baldwin honestly and forthrightly addressed this nation's struggle with race and racism.

1.  Everybody else can be shy, but I don't think there's any topping Martn Luther King.

It is this theory of international power politic that led a group of men on the Supreme Court for the first time in American history to issue an edict, based not on legal precedent, but upon a volume, the editor of which said our Constitution is outdated and must be changed and the writers of which, some had admittedly belonged to as many as half a hundred communist-front organizations. It is this theory that led this same group of men to briefly bare the ungodly core of that philosophy in forbidding little school children to say a prayer. And we find the evidence of that ungodliness even in the removal of the words "in God we trust" from some of our dollars, which was placed there as like evidence by our founding fathers as the faith upon which this system of government was built. It is the spirit of power thirst that caused a President in Washington to take up Caesar's pen and with one stroke of it make a law. A Law which the law making body of Congress refused to pass . . . a law that tells us that we can or cannot buy or sell our very homes, except by his conditions . . . and except at HIS descretion. It is the spirit of power thirst that led the same President to launch a full offensive of twenty-five thousand troops against a university . . . of all places . . . in his own country . . . and against his own people, when this nation maintains only six thousand troops in the beleagured city of Berlin. We have witnessed such acts of "might makes right" over the world as men yielded to the temptation to play God . . . but we have never before witnessed it in America. We reject such acts as free men. We do not defy, for there is nothing to defy . . . since as free men we do not recognize any government right to give freedom . . . or deny freedom. No government erected by man has that right. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; no King holds the right of liberty in his hands." Nor does any ruler in American government.

     We intend, quite simply, to practice the free heritage as bequeathed to us as sons of free fathers. We intend to re-vitalize the truly new and progressive form of government that is less that two hundred years old . . . a government first founded in this nation simply and purely on faith . . . that there is a personal God who rewards good and punishes evil . . . that hard work will receive its just deserts . . . that ambition and ingenuity and incentiveness . . . and profit of such . . are admirable traits and goals . . that the individual is encouraged in his spiritual growth and from that growth arrives at a character that enhances his charity toward others and from that character and that charity so is influenced business, and labor and farmer and government. We intend to renew our faith as God-fearing men . . . not government-fearing men nor any other kind of fearing-men. We intend to roll up our sleeves and pitch in to develop this full bounty God has given us . . . to live full and useful lives and in absolute freedom from all fear. Then can we enjoy the full richness of the Great American Dream.

The liberals' theory that poverty, discrimination and lack of opportunity is the cause of communism is a false theory . . . if it were true the South would have been the biggest single communist bloc in the western hemisphere long ago . . . for after the great War Between the States, our people faced a desolate land of burned universities, destroyed crops and homes, with manpower depleted and crippled, and even the mule, which was required to work the land, was so scarce that whole communities shared one animal to make the spring plowing. There were no government handouts, no Marshall Plan aid, no coddling to make sure that our people would not suffer; instead the South was set upon by the vulturous carpetbagger and federal troops, all loyal Southerners were denied the vote at the point of bayonet, so that the infamous, illegal 14th Amendment might be passed. There was no money, no food and no hope of either. But our grandfathers bent their knee only in church and bowed their head only to God.

     Not for a single instant did they ever consider the easy way of federal dictatorship and amalgamation in return for fat bellies. They fought. They dug sweet roots from the ground with their bare hands and boiled them in iron pots . . . . they gathered poke salad from the woods and acorns from the ground. They fought. They followed no false doctrine . . . they knew what the wanted . . and they fought for freedom! They came up from their knees in the greatest disply of sheer nerve, grit and guts that has ever been set down in the pages of written history . . . and they won! The great writer, Rudyard Kipling wrote of them, that: "There in the Southland of the United States of America, lives the greatest fighting breed of man . . . in all the world!"

I will apply the old sound rule of our fathers, that anything worthy of our defense is worthy of one hundred percent of our defense. I have been taught that freedom meant freedom from any threat or fear of government. I was born in that freedom, I was raised in that freedom . . . I intend to live live in that freedom . . . and God willing, when I die, I shall leave that freedom to my children . . . as my father left it to me.