The Ongoing American Revolution

What were those principles? They are stated most famously-​-​and most eloquently-​-​in the Declaration of Independence. (Get your Cato pocket copy today!) But as Adams correctly observed, the Declaration was more of a culmination than the beginning. The true revolutionary change in ideas preceded it, and they also carried through to the drafting of the Constitution and beyond.

As the Enlightenment began to sweep Europe, new ideas about government and society found their firmest foothold on the outer fringes of the Western world, the English colonies of North America. Here, these philosophical justifications seemed tailor-​made for the reality of the Thirteen Colonies. Largely self-governing—and often minimally governed at all—the colonies lacked any aristocracy of titled nobility. The establishment of a state church was minimal to nonexistent. They were founded in the combination of religious minorities seeking to escape oppression and the quest for commercial profit. They had few taxes, no standing army, and fee-​simple land ownership that revolutionized property ownership by junking the oppressive, multi-​tiered hierarchy of medieval feudalism.

The American Revolution was a complex event spanning millions of individual actors over several decades, each acting from a wide diversity of different motives. But the ideological discourse of the day is astonishingly well-​documented and preserved. No people in history up to that time made such prodigious use of the printing press, making it into the first true popular mass media. It should perhaps be no surprise this was the nation which would go on to pioneer the telegraph, radio, television, the internet, and social media. An endless cornucopia of newspapers, pamphlets, debates, almanacs, published speeches, diaries, letters, and public declarations accompanied the Revolution. This is what Thomas Jefferson was referring to when he downplayed the Declaration as merely an “expression of the American mind.”

“The colonists’ ideas and words counted too, and not merely because they repeated as ideology the familiar utopian phrases of the Enlightenment and of English libertarianism,” explained historian Bernard Bailyn in his influential work The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, “What they were saying by 1776 was familiar in a general way to reformers and illuminati everywhere in the Western world; yet it was different. Words and concepts had been reshaped in the colonists’ minds in the course of a decade of pounding controversy—strangely reshaped, turned in unfamiliar directions, toward conclusions they could not themselves clearly perceive.”

Understanding these principles and how they were entangled and interacted with each other, the consequences they set in motion and which are still unfolding, is critical to understanding America and the modern world. The Revolution was:

liberal, in that its political theory placed a central primacy on individual liberty and freedom from despotic oppression.

republican, in that it rejected monarchy as superstitious tyranny in favor of a government of divided powers where the people, not a crown, are sovereign.

democratic, in that one of its central rallying cries was to defend and expand the autonomy of popularly elected legislatures and self-​governance they represented

traditionalist, in that it appealed to the history and laws of England for vindication of their “rights as Englishmen” under the common law tradition stretching from the Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution, and farther back to the fall of the Roman Republic and the lessons of the ancient Greek city-​states.

progressive, with its celebration of the radical new idea that the fate of humanity was not one of perpetual poverty and drudgery, instead embracing the reality that they had only just begun to see: how the human condition and quality of life really could be improved by material progress.

national, in that it forged a new common American identity, dedicated to a creed of individual rights and providing a means for the common defense of those rights.

enlightened, in that it eagerly adopted and expanded upon the ideas of leading lights of the Enlightenment and the insights they believed could be found through logical reason and the scientific method, including a fascination with new discoveries and technologies.

egalitarian, in that it started from the proposition that “all men are created equal” as its logical first principle, and from that derived both principles of individual liberty and new social customs that swept away the old hierarchies of hereditary status.

individualist, holding to the idea that rights inhere in individual human beings as a matter of human nature and that a just society must respect those rights.

religious, as pulpits across the country expounded on the biblical and theological case for this new order, of divine disapproval of tyranny and freedom as a glorious gift from the creator, and of the religious imperative for faith to be manifested in individuals and voluntary communities rather than compelled by the state.

secular, in that it many of its leaders were skeptical of organized religion and Christian orthodoxy altogether, and even those who weren’t irreligious also envisioned a society of absolute religious freedom and a completely secular government, founded on principles not derived from or limited to any particular faith but instead justified in universal laws of human nature.

pluralist, in that the authors of a new American nation reveled in its diversity and saw in that diversity not the fear of chaos but instead the hope for a world of toleration. They took to heart Voltaire’s observation that “If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace,” applying that pluralistic principle more generally than just religion.

federalist, realizing the solution to the “problem of the extended republic,” by dividing power not just between branches of government but between local states and a federal government of limited powers.

free-​trader, objecting to the crony corporatist mercantilism that was “cutting off our trade with all parts of the world” and denying Americans the prosperity of global trade.

pro-​immigration, with their grievance that Britain’s king had “endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither…”

capitalist, building on a modern sensibility that they had only just recently begun to see, of viewing commerce and entrepreneurship as reputable and productive pursuits, and the early emergence of capital markets and free enterprise.

constitutionalist, in that it advocated the grounding of government in a legal charter and instrument of government above and beyond the whims of the normal legislative process.

These and many more ideas besides are present in not just the Revolution, but the history and present-​day reality of the nation it created. As Americans, this heritage is our cultural, political, and civic DNA.

The Revolution was drenched in its own hypocrisies, its blood-​soaked failures to live up to its high-​minded principles, and the craven depravities committed and tolerated by the revolutionary generation. Slavery was the most glaring and morally catastrophic, followed by the brutal treatment of native Americans, but these are far from the only examples. Still, in even articulating their noble new ideals, the Founders set off the most consequential feedback loop in human history. These ideas had ramifications beyond their reach and ultimately beyond what they could have ever imagined.

The Revolution became our standard of self-​reflection, how we judge ourselves by how close we have come to attaining our national mission statement. The Fourth of July is not an occasion just for celebration but often for reflection and even condemnation. Its words are our language for what it means to us to resist injustice.

It is the biting irony of Frederick Douglass asking “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” It is the invocation of the Declaration’s words and logic at Seneca Falls to correct the omission of “…and women.” It is activists like Frank Kameny picketing Independence Hall on July 4 for their Annual Reminder that gay Americans, too, can lay claim to the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the Statue of Liberty shining its welcoming beacon to all those “yearning to breathe free.” It is Abraham Lincoln’s call to action for the “unfinished work” at Gettysburg. It is Martin Luther King’s “promissory note,” challenging us to “live out the true meaning of its creed.”

The ideas of American Revolution transformed the world, ushering in an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, moral progress, and human flourishing. And just as importantly, the task is still not finished. It may never be and that is part of its purpose. The Declaration is our perpetual call to live up to those self-​evident truths. The Revolution’s principles speak to us as we confront the injustices of today, from the evisceration of civil liberties and the horrors of mass incarceration, to the overbearing expansion of rent-​seeking laws and impoverishing economic interventions, to the dysfunction of our systems of elected representation, to the never-​ending wars abroad as part of a globe-​straddling empire… and in our most recent experience of a head state trying to cling to power by force, against the will of the people.

The Cato Institute has distributed millions of copies of our pocket copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, “to encourage people everywhere to better understand and appreciate the principles of government that are set forth in America’s founding documents.” Those principles underlie everything we do to “secure the blessings of liberty.” We hope you’ll join us in celebrating them this July 4.

Happy Independence Day.