By Anonymous #4
Trump wants to use the 250th anniversary to validate his presidency and portray this era as a “golden age” he restored. His opponents focus on Trump’s many crimes and on his vile coarseness. Administration messaging through Freedom 250 stresses a heroic, mythic narrative of the Founding Fathers and America’s destiny. It encourages citizens to embrace patriotism and national pride. It’s impossible to take in this drivel and not list some aspects of our history that are nothing to be proud of:
- Native American Genocide
- Slavery
- Jackson: The Indian Removal Act
- McKinley: Imperialism
- Women can’t vote until 1920
- The National Security Act of 1947
- McCarthyism
- Vietnam and COINTELPRO
- Political Assassinations
- The Global War on Terror, including Palestine and Iran
Most of us are more comfortable with a traditional approach to July 4, which considers both American achievements and failures, and invites at least the pretense of national self-examination.
The key fact is that the American Revolution is a priceless example of radical political change for the better. The founders overthrew royal tyranny by force. There is a reason virtually every revolution since ours has quoted from the Declaration of Independence. We still love the ideal of liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the constitution. These principles are as seductive – and as subversive – as they were 250 years ago. We see them as fundamental to the American character.
By overthrowing an Old World monarchy and establishing a republic ruled by the property-holding money-making class, the American Revolution was a real step forward. We got rid of feudalism and replaced it with early capitalism. Fewer than 100 years later, President Lincoln presided over the violent downfall of slavery – another class war that laid a foundation for permanent change for the better. He was building on the founding principles of the young country. Washington and Lincoln are worth celebrating.
Trump doesn’t represent a unique threat to democracy. Elements of the federal and state governments have opposed democracy since the Adams administration! I was in Philadelphia for the Bicentennial, 50 years ago. Back then, in the summer of 1976, neither the President nor the Vice President had been elected. Ford was appointed by Nixon, and Rockefeller was appointed by Ford. We had just lost our criminal war in Vietnam. Before that, an elected US government had been overthrown by assassination. Secret police subverted and destroyed the movements for social change.
And yet, despite all the nightmares we have endured, our founding principles are as hard and beautiful as diamonds:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
