Radical friends; since when are they a bad thing? Part 1

Thomas Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution because of Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; it quickly spread among the literate, and, in three months, 120,000 copies sold throughout the American British colonies (with only two million free inhabitants), making it a best-selling work in eighteenth-century America.

He was attacked as being a radical, calling for independence, and violent revolution if necessary, from his own country.

Loyalists vigorously attacked Common Sense. One attack, titled Plain Truth (1776), by Marylander James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack and warned that without monarchy, the government would "degenerate into democracy". John Adams disagreed with the type of radical democracy promoted by Paine, and published Thoughts on Government in 1776 to advocate a more conservative approach to republicanism.
(partially from Wikipedia)