I can’t say that I’ve felt very much enthusiasm for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, insofar as 1776 marks that date (and arguably, it doesn’t). It tells you all you need to know that I spent the Fourth of July under a tree in a nearby park, reading Machiavelli in hundred degree heat. But two of my friends wrote notable and interesting pieces commemorating the 250th, and did so in interestingly similar and dissimilar ways. Both are on Substack, and both are worth reading. My friend Bob Massie has a piece called “A New Birth of Freedom” on his Substack. And my friend Chris Sciabarra has one called “From America 200 to 250: A Personal Journey” on his.
Both are semi-autobiographical essays that celebrate the founding ideals of the American Revolution, and do so by way of reflections on the 200th anniversary of the founding back in 1976. Both describe the 1976 celebrations from roughly the same place: the Fourth of July celebrations that took place in New York City. Bob describes them from the World Trade Center, Chris from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I was there, too: I watched the 1976 bicentennial celebrations as a seven-year-old from the cliffside backyard of a family friend in Weehawken, New Jersey. So I saw much the same spectacle as Bob and Chris did–at the same time, and essentially the same place.
The ideological story each of them tells is both similar to and different from the other. Bob is a liberal Democrat of 70s vintage; Chris is a “dialectical libertarian” of essentially 80s vintage. They both love America in different ways. You’ll have to read them both to see how they converge and diverge, but they end up doing both.
A member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Montclair, Delaney Hall, Newark, New Jersey, June 29, 2026
Both pieces were nostalgic for me. Chris describes the New York City I remember from the 70s; Bob describes the ideological position I once took on the American founding. But nostalgic as they were, both take a celebratory position I can no longer adopt. America has a positive meaning for both of them that it no longer has for me. The alienation involved is nicely captured in Samuel Moyn’s “The Birthday Party No One Wants,” in The Yale Review. The “tradition of consecrating our origins is a spent force,” Moyn writes. It certainly is for me. The only part of the Revolution that really interests me is the part that most intellectuals ignore: the popular resistance to the British occupation of Boston. And the attractions there are more tactical than anything else. What interests me is how the Boston revolutionaries resisted, not why. I have my own why.
Though I agree with much that Moyn says, I would put things more acidly than he does. In saying this, I put present company–Bob, Chris, Moyn–aside. Present company aside, the people celebrating this thing don’t seem to have grasped that what they’re celebrating is a war: a group of middle class revolutionaries declared war against absolute monarchy, and fought that war to bloody victory. What seems farcical about twenty-first century invocations of the Revolutionary War is that while we face a threat at least on par with the British monarchy of 1776, talk of resistance is widely seen as crude, gauche, or embarrassing. Only “woke activists” do stuff like that. The “civilized” way of facing down the threat is to appeal to the courts, and invoke the legalistic glories of federalism. When that fails, I guess, the civilized thing to do is either to downplay the threat or surrender to it.
Outside Delaney Hall, June 29, 2026
The idea of instigating a revolutionary war over Trump’s DHS would occur to almost no one. But precisely for that reason, the invocation of the Revolution is hard to take seriously. What are we rebelling against, again? And how? The Revolution wasn’t a piece of litigation. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t a declaration of abstract commitment to abstract ideals in abstract resistance to abstract tyranny. It was about picking up weapons, pointing them at the shock troops of Empire, and pulling the trigger. If this isn’t your idea of the “ideals” of the American Revolution, you’re thinking of the wrong event. The ideals didn’t exist in some notional ether. Some ideals entail their own physical enactment. This one entailed killing people–lots of people.
But that’s not the lesson that contemporary American intellectuals have learned from the Revolutionary War: as far as they’re concerned, you can be a deskbound “revolutionary” by “explicating” revolutionary “ideals” without ever having to leave your seat. We live in a country whose intellectuals, particularly its academics, are embarrassed at the very idea of activism: even politically charged commencement speeches, and non-neutral presidential memos, are too much for them. They’re willing to “celebrate” the Revolution as long as it’s a party, and willing to enact it as long as it’s a podcast. Take the “ideals” any farther than that, in anything remotely resembling a practical direction, and they’re quick to demur.
If only it was possible to have a Revolution without war, resistance without blood, rebellion without incivility. Don’t get them wrong: wars against Russia, China, or Iran are one thing. Those are “threats,” even if no one has encountered a physical manifestation of the “threats” anywhere in or near the United States. When was the last time agents of Russia, China, or Iran abducted 10,000 people in five days off of the streets of this country? They haven’t. ICE has. But a war against ICE? Right here? At home? Where we’d actually have to see the corpses and bury them? Unacceptable. Horrific. Insane. I mean, so far, ICE has only killed people in dribs and drabs. Don’t we have to wait for a massacre before we consider physical resistance?
Across Doremus Avenue, June 29, 2026
I get it. I’m not eager for civil war, either. What I would say, however, is that if you’re not angry enough to kill an ICE agent, you’re not in a “revolutionary” mood. You’re daydreaming. That’s what the 250th anniversary of the Revolution looks like to me. It’s a gigantic, farcical, national daydream, a cartoon version of revolution, an infant’s version of revolutionary war. The threats we face here at home are bigger than the threats “the Founding Fathers” ever faced in 1776. But that’s not the impression we give, or the impression one gets. The impression one gets is that the dangers are contained, over there, happening to other people, basically legal and under control. Too bad none of that is true. Unfortunately, we are much bigger cowards than the Americans of the eighteenth century, much more easily intimidated by power, much more inured to obedience, much more wedded to our own subjugation, much more in the grips of word play, fantasy, and confabulation, much more addicted to creature comforts. There’s nothing to celebrate there, just a descent from self-respect into self-abnegation.
Neither Bob nor Chris would put things that way, I realize, but that’s the lesson I took from their essays. We’ve devolved to a place from which there is neither redemption nor return. We deserve what happens next.
Policy of Truth 
Reminds me of Voltairine de Cleyre’s line:
“[T]he intention of the Revolutionists [was not] to make the Boston Tea Party Indians the one sacrosanct mob in all history, to be revered but never on any account to be imitated, but … that every American should know to what conditions the masses of people had been brought by the operation of certain institutions, by what means they had wrung out their liberties, and how those liberties had again and again been filched from them by the use of governmental force, fraud, and privilege. Not to breed security, laudation, complacent indolence, passive acquiescence in the acts of a government protected by the label ‘home-made,’ but to beget a wakeful jealousy, a never-ending watchfulness of rulers, a determination to squelch every attempt of those entrusted with power to encroach upon the sphere of individual action ….”
https://praxeology.net/VC-AAT.htm
In 1976 I was 12 and living in Idaho Falls. I watched the tall ships on tv, and sat on the banks of the Snake River watching the local fireworks. I was not very political; indeed in a test of general knowledge I scored high on most points but rather low on who-is-the-current-Secretary-of-State type questions. (I now know who the Secretary of State was in 1976: the war criminal SOB Henry Kissinger.) I had discovered neither philosophy nor libertarianism (of either left or right varieties).
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First, my friend, thanks for the shout-out! I don’t think you’ll be surprised to learn that I see nothing here to disagree with. The enthusiasm I expressed in my essay was mostly nostalgic, and I certainly am not celebrating the current state of this country. As you know, I’ve written deeply critical pieces of the US for several decades, and of the current situation, I’ve condemned everything from US intervention abroad to the Trump war on immigrants, LGBT+ peoples, and trade. I don’t know what shape a revolution at this time would take, but resistance is very much needed, and I applaud your efforts in standing against ongoing injustices.
Interestingly, however, while Act I of my essay was an exercise in nostalgia (though not without an enumeration of all that was wrong in the 1970s), Act II was focused on interpreting the core principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence through a ‘hermeneutic’ lens, that is, as principles, once detached from their authors, advocates, and context, have been and should be applied in ways that the founders could never have envisioned: by blacks and abolitionists in the struggles against slavery, and in the struggles against Jim Crow and apartheid; by women in their struggles for equality and bodily autonomy; by Native Americans who were wholly dispossessed and yet, who appealed to the Declaration’s principles in asserting their own rights; by LGBT+ peoples whose riots at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 propelled a movement toward liberty and liberation for that community. Indeed, change is not always about litigation!
And as I also pointed out, when folks as diverse as Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, Ho Chi Minh, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Benjamin Tucker have drawn from that same Declaration, the revolution is indeed ongoing.
Hence, from where I sit, your comments here are yet one more illustration of the desire to extend that core revolution. What form that revolution takes against this contemporary nightmare is yet to be determined. I too am not eager for a civil war, but cowardice is the surest way to undermine resistance and rebellion so essential to change.
My quote from Thomas Paine is among the most revealing here, for “[t]he strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it.”
Given people’s complacency, we may indeed “deserve what happens next,” but what happens next, despite the immense systemic odds stacked against us, has yet to be determined. Fight on!
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First, my friend, thanks for the shout-out. As you might imagine, I can find little to disagree with here. Nothing in my nostalgic look back at the Bicentennial implies complacency with the current context. As you know, I’ve got a paper trail that goes back decades opposing the actions of the US government, and more recently, its actions abroad, and its war against immigrants, culture (and its illiberal promotion of virulent nativism and white identity politics), , LGBT+ peoples, and trade.
And while Act I of my essay was an exercise in nostalgia (though not without a profound acknowledgment of the depths of despair we faced in the 1970s), Act II was a “hermeneutic” exploration of the ways in which the core principles of the Declaration of Independence, once detached from their authors, advocates, and initial contexts, have been appropriated in ways that the founders could have scarcely recognized: by abolitionists in the struggles against slavery; by blacks in the struggles against Jim Crow and apartheid; by women in the struggles for equality and bodily autonomy; by indigenous peoples who were wholly dispossessed, and who still appealed to the Declaration in fighting for their rights; by immigrants, who have been targeted by different generations over these 250 years; by LGBT+ peoples in their struggles for liberty and liberation. (And remember that the gay liberation movement didn’t begin with litigation; it began with the Stonewall Riots.) Moreover, as I pointed out, these core principles have been embraced as a legitimating framework by folks as diverse as Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, Ho Chi Minh, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Benjamin Tucker.
From where I sit, you’re part of that diverse group. And while neither redemption nor return may be possible, revolutionary change is not impossible. My citation of Thomas Paine’s view that “[t]he strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it” carry much weight here. When so much is systemically stacked against us, it is understandable that neither of us could possibly be eager for a civil war. But while we may “deserve what happens next”, not even what happens next is written in stone. Onward …
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Take III (I’ve tried leaving a comment several times, and if this is a repeat… well, blame the interface!)
First, my friend, thanks for the shout-out. As you might imagine, I can find little to disagree with here. Nothing in my nostalgic look at the Bicentennial implies complacency with the current context. As you know, I’ve got a paper trail that goes back decades opposing the actions of the US government, and more recently, its actions abroad, and its war against immigrants, culture, LGBT+ peoples, trade, and its illiberal promotion of virulent nativism and white identity politics. And while Act I of my essay was an exercise in nostalgia (though not without a profound acknowledgment of the depths of despair we faced in the 1970s), Act II was a “hermeneutic” exploration of the ways in which the core principles of the Declaration of Independence, once detached from their authors, advocates, and initial context, have been appropriated in ways that the founders could have scarcely recognized: by abolitionists in the struggles against slavery; by blacks in the struggles against Jim Crow and apartheid; by women in the struggles for equality and bodily autonomy; by LGBT+ peoples in their struggles for liberty and liberation. And remember that that movement didn’t begin with litigation; it began with the Stonewall Riots. Moreover, as I pointed out, these core principles have been embraced as a legitimating framework by folks as diverse as Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, Ho Chi Minh, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Benjamin Tucker.
From where I sit, you’re part of that diverse group. And while neither redemption nor return may be possible, revolutionary change is not impossible. My citation of Thomas Paine’s view that “[t]he strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it” carry much weight here. When so much is systemically stacked against us, it is understandable that neither of us could possibly be eager for a civil war. But while we may “deserve what happens next”, not even what happens next is written in stone. Onward …
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