Happy July 4th!

Are we straying from the ideals of the Founders? Is America an irredeemable "Great Satan"? Can't we just enjoy celebrating America in a less partisan way?

It's the fourth of July, 2025. Independence Day in the US. Picnics and fireworks. Celebrations of America and generalized patriotism. It's a good opportunity to try to get beyond partisan bullshit and recognize the things we have in common as Americans. It's unfortunate, I think, when people circle the wagons of their particular tribe and "dunk on" their political opponents. And it's annoying. Both in the day-to-day MAGA vs. Resistance sense, and in the ways that History has been selectively interpreted and presented to support a particular point of view.

Some historians I know are angry or afraid that the current administration is either promoting or failing to block movements to change the focus of what students learn about US History in American public schools. This is not really a recent development, but a new battle in an ongoing war over our past and what it means to be an American. A lot of the time, the historical point that's being made is supposed to lead us to the conclusion that we are straying from ideals that are central to our American identity. For example, in the Independence Day post Heather Cox Richardson published yesterday, she celebrated both the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The point she assumes is that "America was founded on the radical idea that all men are created equal." She goes on to suggest that, just as in the Civil War era, "we are now, once again, facing a rebellion against our founding principle as a few people seek to reshape America into a nation in which certain people are better than others."

This won't come as a surprise to Heather's readers, of course. I'd even venture to guess that many of her subscribers turn to her nearly-daily column as a validation and support of the Resistance position. I don't completely disagree with her perspective (or the Resistance); I do however object to the implication that things would be a lot different and better if only the Orange Man hadn't been elected. As an actually bad man once said (which only goes to show that even monsters can occasionally stumble on the truth), it often seems "there's not a dime's worth of difference between them."

I'd also like to object to the incompleteness of the argument that America was founded on and for freedom and equality and that the current administration is as big a threat to America as the Confederacy. And that this is the first time we've had to worry about people seeking to shift American society to one in which "certain people are better than others." Anyone who has spent time seriously considering the founding era and reading primary sources will be aware that there was a range of opinion regarding what freedom is and who ought to be free (much less equal!). It might even be argued that for some of the revolutionaries, the point was more about getting out from under the crown and parliament; the flowery language may just have been rhetoric to some. But even if we assume that everybody was truly committed to beginning a new Republic, there were clearly differences in what people thought that society should look like. Thomas Paine's vision was on the more "democratical" side, at least according to John Adams, whom it alarmed and annoyed. And opponents of Adams claimed he was trying to institute a monarchy.

He wasn't, probably. But there were some serious disagreements about things like participation in government. We tend to focus on America's "original sin" of slavery, when we criticize the founders. But there were other issues in the founding era and later; many of them centered on social class and power. Historians and Civics teachers haven't done an adequate job covering these, in my opinion. I'm going to focus on them in my teaching and writing.

But although I object to people whitewashing the founding as I've just done; I also get really annoyed when people claim there's nothing to celebrate on July 4th. Yes, of course there have been important critiques like Douglass's "What, to a Slave, is the Fourth of July" and Quinney's "Address at Reidsville". And I think Howard Zinn did America a service by uncovering some of our warts in A People's History. But I'm not down with the socialists at Verso Books announcing their sale with: "America: The Great Satan. July 4th marks the 249th anniversary of the declaration of America's independence. This is no reason to celebrate." I think this type of signaling is just going to exacerbate divisiveness and rancor. So I won't be buying any of their "Great Satan Reading List" sale books. Instead, I’ll be meeting some friends (liberals and conservatives) at Itasca State Park, where the Mississippi begins.

Happy 4th!