It felt to me as if Paine were speaking out of the past, like a colonial podcaster. Paine’s pamphlet sat at the center of that lecture, ​“Declaring Independence,” which was delivered on Sept. 19. Simple facts, plain arguments, common sense.”Reviewing England’s past alone, that unhappy isle has had 30 kings, Paine enumerates. The change contemplated was personal and profound, she said, and independence implied ​“emotional rupture.” Part of the genius of Common Sense is that Paine understood this and he methodically addressed each defense, and with a no-nonsense common touch. He points out, for example — another surprise to me, and maybe Paine got his facts wrong — that only a third of Americans at the time hailed from England.