SECULAR, HUMANIST, INTERNATIONALIST

Bipartisan Bill Would Place Thomas Paine Memorial Among America's Most Honored Founders in Washington, D.C.

Thomas Paine Memorial Association

RNS Press Release Distribution Service

July 15, 2026 

By Margaret Downey

More than two centuries after Thomas Paine helped ignite the movement for American independence, Congress has taken an important step toward giving him the national recognition many historians believe he has long deserved.

The Thomas Paine Memorial Association (TPMA) welcomes the introduction of the Common Sense 250 Act of 2026 (H.R. 9600), bipartisan legislation sponsored by Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08) and Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R-IN-05). Once enacted, the bill would authorize a memorial honoring Thomas Paine in Area I of Washington, D.C.’s monumental core—an honor reserved for individuals whose contributions to the United States are of “preeminent and lasting historical significance.”

The legislation arrives at a particularly meaningful moment as the nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of its founding. It also marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, the extraordinary pamphlet that transformed colonial debate into a movement for independence.

Although Thomas Paine’s words helped inspire the birth of the United States, he remains one of the few major Founding figures without a memorial in the nation’s capital.

Born in England, Paine arrived in America in 1774 with little more than a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. Within months, he had become one of the Revolution’s most influential voices.

Published in January 1776, Common Sense became the bestselling political work of the eighteenth century. Written in language ordinary citizens could understand, it persuaded thousands of colonists that complete independence—not reconciliation with Great Britain—was both necessary and achievable. He sold half a million copies of Common Sense when the nation was still only an idea. Paine never sought to profit from his revolutionary writing. He declined royalties from Common Sense, surrendered his copyright so it could be freely reprinted, and donated his earnings to support the Continental Army.

Thomas Paine gave this country its argument for independence, then took up a musket in the Continental Army to help win it. His service extended beyond the printed page. During the Revolutionary War, Paine served alongside General George Washington’s army and wrote the thirteen essays collectively known as The American Crisis. His words inspired soldiers during some of the war’s darkest days.

Paine’s legacy extends well beyond American independence. He condemned slavery decades before abolition became a national movement. He advocated universal education for boys and girls, defended religious liberty, promoted democratic government, argued for social welfare programs, and envisioned international cooperation among free nations. He also popularized the phrase “United States of America,” helping define the identity of the new nation.

His writings later influenced leaders including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, demonstrating that his ideas continued to shape American democracy long after the Revolution.

For many supporters, the absence of a memorial to Paine on the National Mall has become one of the nation’s most significant historical omissions.

Congressman Jamie Raskin emphasized the historic significance of the legislation, saying, “On the 250th anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, our legislation finally brings the great Tom Paine from the attics and libraries of history to a place of shining prominence on our National Mall, establishing the dazzling national memorial he deserves.”

Congresswoman Victoria Spartz connected the proposal to the nation’s anniversary celebration, stating, “As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, we remember Thomas Paine’s timeless words, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ important words that helped rally General Washington’s army. Their sacrifices should remind us of the price so many Americans paid to secure our freedom—a precious gift we have a solemn duty to preserve for future generations.”

Leaders of the Thomas Paine Memorial Association described the bill as the culmination of decades of effort by supporters throughout the United States and abroad.

TPMA Vice President Robyn Blumner noted that Paine’s influence continues to resonate around the world. “Thomas Paine’s writings transformed scattered resistance into a movement for independence,” she said. “His ideas helped create the United States, and his influence continues to shape democratic societies around the world. A memorial worthy of his legacy belongs in our nation’s most distinguished commemorative landscape.”

Secretary of TPMA Annie Laurie Gaylor underscored the memorial’s symbolic importance during the nation’s semiquincentennial. “Without Thomas Paine, the United States would not be celebrating its 250th anniversary,” she said. “No tribute to this milestone would be more fitting than ensuring that Paine’s long-overdue memorial stands prominently near the Capitol and National Mall, where his life, words, and vision can inspire millions of visitors.”

TPMA Treasurer Diane Straka reflected on the many years of dedication that have brought the project to this point. “For decades, supporters across the United States and around the world have shared a vision of honoring Thomas Paine in the place where his ideas helped shape the nation he inspired,” Straka said. “This legislation brings that vision significantly closer to reality. We remain steadfast in our commitment to honoring Thomas Paine and to ensuring that every contribution entrusted to us advances our mission with transparency, accountability, and responsible stewardship.”

If Congress approves the legislation, supporters will have up to seven years to complete fundraising, finalize the memorial’s design, secure approvals from federal commissions, and construct the monument on an approved Area I site.

The Thomas Paine Memorial Association has already enlisted internationally acclaimed sculptor Zenos Frudakis, whose clay statue of Thomas Paine is currently housed at his studio in Glenside, Pennsylvania.

Upon learning that the legislation had been introduced, Frudakis reflected on the significance of the project. “As a sculptor, there are few honors greater than being entrusted with preserving the memory of someone who helped change the course of history. My goal is to create a Thomas Paine who speaks not only to his own time, but to every generation that believes in freedom, reason, and the power of ideas.”

For supporters of the memorial, the legislation represents more than authorization for another monument. It is an opportunity to restore one of America’s most influential founders to his rightful place among the nation’s honored architects of liberty. For 250 years, the capital he helped bring into being has had no memorial to him. TPMA seeks to correct that, and Area I is the prestigious location where he belongs.

As the United States reflects on its first 250 years, many believe there could be no more appropriate time to recognize the writer whose words helped make American independence possible.

Thomas Paine Memorial Association

Email: Margaret@ThomasPaineMemorial.org

Website: https://ThomasPaineMemorial.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThomasPaineMA/

Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/thomas-paine-memorial-association-meetup-group/

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RNS or Religion News Foundation.

A Budget of the Pentagon, By the Congress, and For the War Profiteers

America's Dilemma at 250

by Eisenhower Media Network | Jul 15, 2026 

Reprinted with permission from the Eisenhower Media Network’s Substack.   Visit the Eisenhower Media Network.

By: Major General Dennis Laich, US Army, (ret.) Executive Director, Eisenhower Media Network

The first sentence of Thomas Paine’s classic 1776 essay, Common Sense, urged the American people to challenge the legitimacy of the English Crown, something that had never been challenged before. He wrote:

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them a great favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

Two hundred and fifty years later, time and reason strongly suggest that the U.S. “defense” budget is out of control, unsustainable and absent of accountability.

Only the American people can rein it in.

Credit: The White House

The “defense of custom” in this case will come from the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) of which President Eisenhower warned us in 1961 in his farewell address, and drove home the consequences of in his famous “Cross of Iron” speech in 1953. In his address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Eisenhower said the following:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

All of these forces benefit by exaggerating threats to our national security which justify a huge U.S. “defense” budget, larger than the next eight nations (most of whom are allies) in the world combined, while American citizens lack health care, childcare and other basic needs.

The defense industry’s lobbyists team up with U.S. politicians, who receive campaign financing from the industry, to draft the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military policy, the expensive weaponry to be purchased, and the overall military budget. The industry takes the ensuing windfall and puts it toward stock buybacks, which increase the share price, making the rich richer; dividend payments for shareholders; eight-figure annual compensation packages for corporate executives; and the continual political graft (campaign contributions and lobbyists) that keeps the wheel spinning. Incredibly, some contracts stipulate that only the contractor may repair and maintain equipment.

The most embarrassing example of this practice is the F-35 Stealth Fighter, which is grossly over budget, behind schedule and is only 25% fully mission capable.

Credit: US Air Force

The principal beneficiaries of the MICC’s practice of vastly overstating foreign threats are the Pentagon and the invertebrate senior uniformed bureaucrats who occupy it and secure lucrative post-retirement employment with the MICC. The massive Pentagon budget provides the Pentagon with a premier position within both the government and society. Money talks in America, but few members of Congress choose to talk about the $39 trillion national debt to which military spending is a major contributor.

Unfortunately, the uniformed bureaucrats lack the courage to stand up against a draft dodger and a Rambo-wannabe in order to protect their profession or the institution of the military. Government employees, including military officials, are fired for specious reasons and no one, not even those who were fired, dare speak up regarding the negative impact on morale, discipline and readiness. Nor do they speak up when the U.S. supports genocide in Gaza, extrajudicial murders in the Caribbean, or attacks the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.

These recent developments will serve to accelerate a decline in the U.S. military’s performance. Since WWII, the U.S. has won one war (the first Gulf War), lost four (Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran) and tied one (Korea. Iran may be as much an embarrassment as a loss. The United States has failed to achieve its stated objectives in any recent war, despite having a military budget larger than the next eight countries combined and being easily the most defensible of any peer nation (with two friendly, stable nations to its north and south and oceans on its east and west). What football coach could keep his job with a 1-4-1 record?

Additionally, the Pentagon cannot tell the American taxpayer where the money went, since it is unable to pass a financial audit as required by law – something every other department of the federal government is able to do. Now, they are requesting a 50% increase in the defense budget to S1.5 trillion. This is equivalent to your child asking for more money a day after receiving his/her allowance. When you ask what happened to the money he/she received yesterday, the child can’t answer the question, but you give him/her more money regardless.

Credit: Touch of Light/Wikimedia (Pentagon)

This represents a level of arrogance and incompetence that the American people should not be asked to tolerate. Thomas Paine understood something that seemed impossible in 1776. On paper, the American colonies had no chance against the greatest empire on Earth. Britain possessed the world’s most powerful military, immense wealth, and overwhelming resources. The colonies had none of those advantages. What Paine recognized as “common sense” was that wars are not won by budgets alone. They are won by legitimacy, purpose, and the willingness of a free people to defend their own liberty.

The $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request represents more than S9,000 per individual taxpayer. If we Americans are tired of seeing our tax dollars spent on endless wars, bombing campaigns, and military excess while our own communities struggle with the costs of health care, child care, education, and infrastructure, then the time has come to do what Thomas Paine asked Americans to do 250 years ago: challenge the assumptions that have become accepted simply because they are old. The courage required today is not to defeat an empire abroad, but to confront one at home — the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex — and reclaim a government that serves the American people rather than the interests of perpetual war.

The Eisenhower Media Network (EMN) comprises former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who offer independent analysis based on decades of real-world experience, study, and scholarship. EMN aims to reach broad, cross-partisan audiences in diverse media outlets and among the American people, who increasingly sense that US foreign policy today is not making them, or the world, safer.

The War Machine, and the War Budget, Are Out of Control—Let’s Change That

The Trump administration, enabled by many in Congress, is proposing an outrageous 66% increase in Pentagon and related spending, to over $1.5 trillion per year; we must stop this madness.

Members of the US military are seen next to a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as preparations are made for the “Salute to America” Fourth of July event with US President Donald Trump at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, July 3, 2019, which will feature flyovers by the Blue Angels, an airplane used as Air Force One, as well as military demonstrations and a speech by Trump.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

Kevin Martin
Jul 14, 2026

Common Dreams


Much of the time, it seems as if the war machine runs on autopilot. Indeed, the United States has been engaged in warfare for almost the entirety of our 250 year history. It feels overwhelming to most people to attempt to intervene, yet we are all involved, as our tax dollars feed endless wars, interventions, and weapons transfers fueling violent conflict around the world—and at home, as evidenced by the murders of US citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So, intervene we must, if we want our government to pursue more productive, life-affirming policies and priorities.

This week, the Senate will vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to set those war policies and priorities for the next fiscal year. The Trump administration, enabled by many in Congress, is proposing an outrageous 66% increase in Pentagon and related spending, to over $1.5 trillion per year. While this is a boon to weapons manufacturers, it is to the detriment of everyone and everything else. We must stop this madness.

On the other side of the guns vs. butter ledger, Trump has already slashed over $1 trillion in funding from healthcare and food assistance programs over the next decade. And he wants to make even bigger cuts to healthcare, climate, housing, food, and other human needs. Trump recently said we can’t fund childcare because we’re fighting wars, in the context of his (and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s) illegal war of aggression against Iran. Sometimes he says the quiet part out loud.

So the task is simple—to tell the Senate to vote “no” on this misappropriation of our tax dollars. It is easy enough to dial the US Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and ask to be connected to your two senators (requiring two calls).

Politicians in Washington, and the masters of war (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and company) count on a complacent citizenry accepting business as usual to keep their endless war gravy train running.

In addition to demanding they vote against this gargantuan war budget, tell them to reject the proposed US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, and a related Intelligence cooperation agreement, both of which would further entangle the two countries’ war machines, at a time when the government of Israel is deservedly unpopular for its never-ending wars, and its occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

If you can do more than call, please write to your senators with the following message, with thanks to the People Over Pentagon coalition:

Dear Senator,

I urge you to vote against President Donald Trump’s request for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, to oppose any increase to the Pentagon budget for 2027, and to vote for any amendment to cut that budget.

Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget for the Pentagon would be a stunning 66% increase over last year’s already enormous $900 billion Pentagon budget. Trump is cutting funding for healthcare, housing, food, education, and climate action. He is using this money to dramatically increase funding for the Pentagon.

Trump has already cut over a trillion dollars from funds for Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and SNAP, which helps low income people buy food. Millions of people are expected to lose healthcare coverage and food.

The Pentagon is unaccountable to American taxpayers and has never passed an audit. More than half of the Pentagon’s budget (54%) is paid to corporate military contractors, whose profits are rising. Further gigantic increases would be grossly irresponsible.

Please oppose Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget and oppose any increase in Pentagon funding this year. This money should be invested in meeting basic needs in our communities.


Please encourage friends, family, and colleagues to call or write as well, and you can tag your senators on social media, with this simple message:
Dear @ Senator (fill in their names), I urge you to vote against Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget. Please oppose any increase in funding for the Pentagon. This money must be spent on human needs, including healthcare, housing, food, education, and climate action. #PeopleOverPentagon.

Politicians in Washington, and the masters of war (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and company) count on a complacent citizenry accepting business as usual to keep their endless war gravy train running. Let them know this outlandish war budget is unacceptable, and that we will be watching and holding them accountable.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Kevin Martin
Kevin Martin is the president of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, with over 40 years experience as a peace and justice organizer. He is helping coordinate the Cease-Fire Now Grassroots Advocacy Network.
Full Bio >

Op-Ed

Trump’s UFC Cage Fight Is an Apt Metaphor for a Nation Built on Colonial Violence

The White House’s Freedom 250 spectacle grotesquely exposed the settler-colonial legacy of 1776.

By Jesse Hagopian ,

 Truthout

July 2, 2026

Fireworks go off during "UFC Freedom 250" mixed martial arts event on the South Lawn of the White House on June 15, 2026, in Washington, D.C.Saul Loeb - Pool / Getty Images


“On July 4th, 1776 … the United States became the greatest force for freedom, justice, equality, and prosperity in the history of the world,” President Donald Trump declared in a promotional video for the Freedom 250 campaign, the administration’s flagship initiative commemorating the U.S.’s semiquincentennial. Among the centerpiece events planned for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration was an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) cage fight on the grounds of the White House.

The June 14 event, which occurred on Trump’s birthday and Flag Day, delivered exactly what he promised: a pageant of power, violence, and nationalism staged at the seat of U.S. power. Thousands gathered around an octagonal cage erected on the White House grounds; cabinet secretaries mingled with senators, tech billionaires with celebrity athletes, media personalities with corporate sponsors, all beneath military flyovers and pyrotechnic displays. Under the lights, fighters bloodied one another as the crowd roared its approval.

Liberals found the event crass. Sen. Patty Murray called it “out of touch.” New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote, “On the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, America’s increasingly senescent president turned the White House lawn into a tacky, bloody gladiatorial arena.” Meanwhile, CNN quoted one historian who asked, “What does a UFC fight have to do with America’s greatness?”

The historian’s question assumes that the values represented by the spectacle — domination, hierarchy, and the glorification of power — are fundamentally at odds with the ideals of the founding of the United States. But what if the contradiction lies not between the cage match and the American Revolution, but between the history that people in the U.S. are taught and the history that actually unfolded? To answer that question, it helps to begin with an observation from Martinican poet and anti-colonial theorist Aimé Césaire: “No one colonizes innocently.”

By fusing combat, militarism, celebrity culture, and nationalism into a single public performance, the White House cage match endeavored to cast repression, xenophobia, and extreme inequality not as threats to freedom but as expressions of national strength.

Americans are taught that their nation was born in the cradle of liberty. But Césaire’s insight requires us to confront a more disquieting truth: The U.S. republic emerged from another womb altogether — the smoke of burning villages, the holds of slave ships, and the ambitions of a colonial elite willing to unleash unspeakable violence in pursuit of wealth and power. Indeed, what better way to party like it’s 1776 than with a spectacle of combat staged at the center of U.S. empire?

The cage fight, surrounded by representatives of every branch of the armed forces, was part of Trump’s effort to cultivate a cult of personality. Writing under Nazi rule, cultural theorist Walter Benjamin described fascism as the “aestheticization of politics” — the transformation of political life into spectacle in order to generate emotional attachment to authority. By fusing combat, militarism, celebrity culture, and nationalism into a single public performance, the White House cage match endeavored to cast repression, xenophobia, and extreme inequality not as threats to freedom but as expressions of national strength.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the country faces rising authoritarianism, ongoing state violence against Black communities, a worsening affordability crisis, widening wars, climate catastrophe, attacks on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, and an escalating siege on critical education. We can no longer afford to leave the meaning of 1776 to Donald Trump, establishment Democratic Party politicians, billionaire-funded media outlets, or the sanitized narratives found in many textbooks. Only by confronting the republic’s colonial foundations — and recovering the traditions of freedom forged by those who resisted them — can we pursue a different future.


National Innocence or Colonial Brutality?


Trump’s over-the-top jingoism obscures a deeper truth: The refusal to reckon with the United States as a settler-colonial project is a bipartisan affliction. As President Barack Obama declared: “The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.” President Joe Biden similarly argued, “Deep in the heart of America burns a flame lit almost 250 years ago — of liberty, freedom, and equality.” Trump did not invent the founding fairytale of innocence; he inherited and radicalized this bedtime story that has from the beginning called the United States the “fairest of them all” to obscure its colonial origins.

The U.S. republic emerged from the smoke of burning villages, the holds of slave ships, and the ambitions of a colonial elite willing to unleash unspeakable violence in pursuit of wealth and power.

It’s clear Trump has exploited the bipartisan faith in American exceptionalism to suppress dissent and concentrate executive power. Yet his authoritarianism is less an aberration than the latest expression of a recurring pattern. From slavery and Indigenous dispossession to Jim Crow, Japanese American incarceration during World War II, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, and NSPM-7 today, authoritarianism has repeatedly resurfaced. Its roots lie in the colonial foundations of the republic, where conquest, racial hierarchy, and state violence became enduring instruments of governance. The 20th century’s most infamous authoritarian movements did not emerge from nowhere. They drew upon centuries of colonial practice. For example, Adolf Hitler openly admired the United States’ genocide of Indigenous peoples. In a 1928 speech, he praised white American settlers for having “gunned down” millions of Indigenous people until only a “few hundred thousand” remained. As James Q. Whitman, author Hitler’s American Model, notes, “Beyond its laws, the Nazis also admired America’s conquest of the West.” Nazi leaders viewed the United States’ seizure of Indigenous lands and westward expansion as precedents for their own project of Lebensraum (“living space”) — the conquest and ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe.

The Nazi fascination with the U.S. frontier was rooted in a historical reality that many accounts of 1776 still minimize. As historian Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, writes, the Haudenosaunee remember George Washington as the “town destroyer” for ordering the destruction of dozens of Haudenosaunee towns during the Revolutionary War. “In a very real sense,” Estes concludes, “the founding of the United States was a declaration of war against Indigenous peoples.” One of the principal grievances driving many advocates of independence was the British Crown’s attempt to restrict westward expansion after the Seven Years’ War. The Declaration of Independence itself denounced Indigenous peoples as “merciless Indian Savages,” revealing that Native nations were viewed as obstacles to colonial expansion rather than sovereign peoples. Independence swept aside those restraints and accelerated a centuries-long project of dispossession, forced removal, and genocide.

For anti-colonial thinkers such as Aimé Césaire, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Walter Rodney, fascism was not a departure from colonialism but one of its logical destinations. As historian Robin D. G. Kelley argues in his introduction to Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, one of the book’s most important contributions was its effort to “locate the origins of fascism within colonialism itself.” Kelley and the anti-colonialists he draws on have shown that white supremacy, dispossession, dehumanization, and state violence did not begin with fascism. Those methods had long been refined through colonial conquest, empire, and racial domination before they were turned inward against Europe itself.


Only by confronting the republic’s colonial foundations — and recovering the traditions of freedom forged by those who resisted them — can we pursue a different future.

Most people in the U.S. have been taught to view 1776 as the starting point for understanding the origins of freedom. But the choices confronting enslaved people during the American Revolution reveal the limits of the “patriot” vision. In 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled in favor of James Somerset, an enslaved African who resisted being returned from England to slavery in Jamaica, alarming colonial slaveholders who feared Britain might eventually restrict slavery. Those fears intensified in 1775 when Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, offered freedom to enslaved people owned by rebel colonists if they escaped and joined the British side. Thousands fled to British lines. So threatening was the prospect of enslaved people claiming freedom that the Declaration of Independence condemned George III for having “excited domestic insurrections amongst us” — a phrase widely understood as a reference to Dunmore’s proclamation. For many colonial elites, one of the gravest dangers posed by British rule was that it might undermine slavery itself.

The American Revolution looked very different from the tobacco and cotton fields than it did from the plantation house or Independence Hall. Take the question Frederick Douglass asked in his famous speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and consider his conclusion:

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, [is] inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

More than a century later, the Black revolutionary and anti-colonial thinker Malcolm X advanced a similar critique, urging Black people to reject the assumption that their freedom originated with the American founding:

We are Africans, and we happen to be in America. We are not Americans. We are a people who formerly were Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren’t the Pilgrims. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; the rock landed on us. We were brought here against our will … We were not brought here to enjoy the constitutional gifts that they speak so beautifully about today.

Malcolm X’s challenge forces us to confront the reality that the American Revolution was shaped by conquest, slavery, and elite rule. Once we abandon the assumption that 1776 represents the highest expression of freedom, another revolution comes into view — one that pushed the ideals of liberty and equality far beyond anything the U.S. founders were willing to imagine.


Fear of a Black Republic


To understand the limits of the American Revolution, we need only compare it to the Haitian Revolution, which erupted shortly thereafter in the same Atlantic world. The Haitian Revolution breached the walls U.S. and European empires had erected around the idea that freedom was the sole property of white people, and rescued the idea of emancipation as the natural human condition.

Beginning in 1791, enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue revolted against one of the most brutal slave systems in the world. Under the leadership of figures such as Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, they defeated French, Spanish, and British armies and, in 1804, established Haiti — the first Black republic and the only nation ever created through a successful slave revolution.


At a moment when the United States restricted citizenship and political power along racial lines, Haiti offered a strikingly different vision — one in which solidarity with the struggle against slavery and colonialism mattered more than ancestry or skin color.

The contrast with the United States is striking. Haiti’s 1805 Constitution declared that “Slavery is forever abolished” and that “all acception of color” was “necessarily to cease,” while the U.S. Constitution protected slavery and racism through the Three-Fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause. Haiti’s commitment to freedom was not limited to people of African descent. After independence, Haitian leaders granted citizenship and full rights to many Polish soldiers who had defected from Napoleon’s army and joined the revolutionary cause. At a moment when the United States restricted citizenship and political power along racial lines, Haiti offered a strikingly different vision — one in which solidarity with the struggle against slavery and colonialism mattered more than ancestry or skin color.

Yet Haitian revolutionaries also understood that freedom’s greatest enemies often masqueraded as its guileless defenders.

Toussaint Louverture, the brilliant Haitian general who led the revolution, understood that systems of domination rarely announce themselves as such and prefer to hide behind a mask of innocence. Writing in 1799, Louverture warned of “the unity that exists between the proprietors of St.-Domingue who are in France, those in the United States, and those who serve under the English banner.” These slaveholding interests from powerful nations, he argued, were united behind an “unequivocal and carefully constructed” plan for “the restoration of slavery.” Yet they did not openly proclaim themselves enemies of freedom. Instead, he observed, they sought to “envelop themselves in the mantle of liberty in order to strike it more deadly blows.”

As historian Leslie M. Alexander explains in her book, Fear of a Black Republic, Haitian independence “transformed global conceptions of freedom and challenged existing assumptions about who possessed human rights and who did not.” The revolution exposed the lie that slavery was natural or permanent and proved that enslaved people could overthrow their oppressors and govern themselves.

The panic was immediate among enslavers and the leaders of the new United States. As historian Brian Jones notes in his book, Black History Is For Everyone, over a nearly two-year period from 1791 to 1793, U.S. officials sent approximately $726,000 to Saint-Domingue to support enslavers attempting to crush the uprising.

As the uprising spread across Saint-Domingue in 1791, President George Washington declared, “Lamentable! To see such a spirit of revolt among the Blacks.” Alexander Hamilton described the Haitian Revolution as a “calamitous event.” In 1793, Thomas Jefferson — the author of the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence — feared that the Haitian Revolution threatened the entire slave system of the Americas, worrying that “all the West India Islands will remain in the hands of the people of colour” and that slaveholders south of the Potomac might one day have to “wade through” similarly “bloody scenes.” Fearing that the rebellion would inspire enslaved people in the United States, Jefferson warned that unless slaveholders and the U.S. government acted quickly to contain its influence, they would bring ruin upon themselves: “If something is not done, and done soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children.”

By 1802, Jefferson expressed the great fears of freedom-loving enslavers everywhere when he said that Haiti had already “given considerable impulse to the minds of the slaves” and that “a great disposition to insurgency has manifested itself among them.”

The hostility was not merely rhetorical. After becoming president, Jefferson imposed an economically devastating embargo on Haiti, and the United States refused to formally recognize Haitian independence until 1862. Haiti’s greatest crime, in the eyes of enslavers, was that it cracked open history and revealed another future waiting inside — a future in which Black people not only won their freedom but established their own sovereign nation.

This history undermines one of the most common defenses of the founders: that they were merely people of their time. The Haitian Revolution demonstrates that the brutality of slavery was not beyond the moral imagination of the 18th century. Enslaved people, abolitionists, Maroons, and Indigenous resisters understood it well. Haiti proved that a republic could be built on abolition rather than slavery. The question was never whether a broader vision of freedom was possible, but whether those who benefited from oppression would surrender power.

The fact of the Haitian Revolution also demolishes the claim that the United States led the world toward abolition. As PragerU — the far right propaganda organization that produces videos for children — asserts, “America was one of the first places on earth to outlaw slavery.” Or as one of their flagrantly inaccurate videos proclaimed, “White people were the first to formally put an end to slavery … white men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice.”


If the next 250 years are to bring us closer to freedom than the last, we must reject the colonial lie that the founding of the United States marked the fulfillment of freedom.

The truth is the United States maintained slavery longer than every independent nation in the Americas except Brazil and Paraguay (with the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico abolishing slavery later as well). Black Haitians abolished slavery in 1804 — long before Britain, France, or the United States — and helped spread emancipation throughout the Americas, including through its support for Simón Bolívar’s anti-colonial struggles. It took the bloodiest war in U.S. history to finally destroy the institution of slavery in 1865 because so much of the nation’s political and economic system was built upon it.

The history of emancipation in the Americas reveals that the most expansive visions of freedom emerged not from white men with silver shoe buckles and powdered wigs, but from barefoot Black revolutionaries with natural curls and the scars from leg irons. At stake in our interpretation of the American Revolution is more than the reputation of the founders; it is the kind of society we believe is possible and the future we are struggling to create.

The Fight for the Next 250


If the next 250 years are to bring us closer to freedom than the last, we must reject the colonial lie that the founding of the United States marked the fulfillment of freedom. Yet rejecting that lie does not mean denying its significance.

The American Revolution did help demonstrate that kings could be overthrown and challenged hereditary rule. Its language of liberty was seized upon by women, laborers, abolitionists, and democratic radicals who insisted that freedom meant far more than independence from Britain. Take formerly enslaved Boston abolitionist Prince Hall, who seized upon the American Revolution’s own language to demand the abolition of slavery. In a 1777 petition to the Massachusetts legislature, Hall and seven other free Black men insisted that enslaved people possessed “a natural and unalienable right to that freedom” bestowed “equally on all mankind.” Thomas Paine was another such radical. His bestselling pamphlet Common Sense helped ignite the American Revolution, while his 1775 essay “African Slavery in America” denounced slavery as “an outrage against humanity” and called for its abolition. As Hall and Paine demonstrate, the American Revolution raised expectations for freedom that many of its most powerful leaders worked just as fiercely to keep from becoming universal.

To decolonize our understanding of 1776, however, is not simply to recover missing voices to the story of the American Revolution. It is to recognize that the most expansive traditions of freedom were not the product of a colonial elite, but instead lived in Indigenous resistance to conquest, in slave rebellions, in the Haitian Revolution, in abolitionism, in Reconstruction, and in the many social movements for collective liberation.

It is no accident that these traditions are being targeted today. Voting rights are under attack. State violence continues to be inflicted on Black communities. The United States continues to occupy Native land and refuses to honor treaties it signed with Indigenous nations. Educational gag orders and book bans seek to prevent people from learning about racism, colonialism, and inequality. As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, it also celebrates an economic order that has produced both 44 million people living in poverty and, however briefly, the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk — whose fortune has been propelled in part by his investments in SpaceX, a company dedicated to colonizing Mars.


Once we understand that some of the deepest roots of authoritarianism lie within the colonial foundations of the republic itself, we can better grasp the scale of the transformation necessary to achieve genuine freedom.

Perhaps the deepest legacy of colonialism is not only the conquest of land, but also the conquest of political imagination itself. Two hundred and fifty years after 1776, we are still taught that the highest expression of freedom is expansion — ever more power, ever more wealth, ever more conquest. The colonial imagination of the U.S. elite can conceive of colonies on Mars more readily than justice on Earth. We are asked to believe that colonizing another planet is a realistic and noble ambition while guaranteeing housing, health care, education, and dignity for every person is dismissed as utopian fantasy.

More than 70 years ago, Aimé Césaire warned that “a civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.” His warning remains our own. Once we understand that some of the deepest roots of authoritarianism lie within the colonial foundations of the republic itself, we can better grasp the scale of the transformation necessary to achieve genuine freedom. Decolonizing 1776 therefore requires more than rethinking the past; it requires reclaiming our capacity to imagine a different future that can guide the struggle for the next 250 years.

As Louverture declared during the Haitian Revolution: “I want Liberty and Equality to reign … I work to bring them into existence. Unite yourselves to us, brothers, and fight with us for the same cause.”

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Jesse Hagopian

Jesse Hagopian is a Seattle educator, the director of the Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign, an editor for Rethinking Schools, and the author of the book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. You can follow him at IAmAnEducator.com, Instagram, Bluesky or Substack.

Historian dismisses Trump Independence Day rhetoric as 'Red Scare idiocy'

Bennito L. Kelty
July 4, 2026

RAW STORY



U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech during a celebration for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, at Mount Rushmore in Keystone, South Dakota, U.S., July 3, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT TPX IMAGES OF THE DA

A presidential historian slammed Trump's Independence Day speech as nothing more than "Joe McCarthy Red Scare idiocy."

During an appearance on MS NOW on Saturday, Doug Brinkley tore into the speech that Trump gave in front of Mount Rushmore to kick off the Independence Day weekend. In particular, Brinkley found it "deeply offensive" that Trump would spend time warning about communists because of recent primary victories by democratic socialists.

"It was just Joe McCarthy red scare idiocy because he's out there talking about this communist menace as if it's the early Cold War years," Brinkley went off. "It's just what he wants the Republicans to run on in this election cycle."

MS NOW anchor Alex Witt agreed, adding, "When the president says, 'America will never become a communist country,' I was thinking to myself, 'Well, who said it was going to anyway?'"

Brinkley compared Trump's speech to "McCarthy starting to have his list in Wheeling, West Virginia, waving it, that they are infiltrators all over." McCarthy famously tried to root out alleged communists during a period called the Red Scare.

Trump's speech was "utter nonsense," Brinkley continued, while admitting that "politicizing" is "natural in our days."

However, he optimistically viewed most Americans "watching on Main Street" as having the "spirit" of "a red, white and blue blast, and let's have a barbecue, let's see some family, see some friends, and then we'll get on to the bickering of politics during Monday or Tuesday."]

He also suggested, "I think our inclination for this weekend should be to try to transcend Donald Trump's rhetoric and just sort of block it out for 48 hours."

Trump’s assault on nation’s founding promise hands the left perfect opportunity: historian

Alexander Willis
July 4, 2026 
RAW STORY

A sticker depicting U.S. President Donald Trump, next to security barricades near the Washington Monument ahead of Fourth of July celebrations, marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Donald Trump's assault on the nation's founding democratic promise has handed the political left a perfect opportunity to reclaim its legacy, argued historian Harvey Kaye in an analysis published in Zeteo on Saturday.

Kaye, professor emeritus of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote that the nation is marking its 250th anniversary even as "Donald Trump and his minions" pursue their "reactionary ambitions" – a timing he called "nothing less than ironic, as if history were playing a cruel joke on us."

“Hardly the grounds for a grand celebration. And yet, the 250th comes at the perfect time for the Left,” Kaye wrote.

“Indeed, rather than dismiss or scorn the occasion as we may be wont to, we progressives, populists, and democratic socialists should step up and embrace it. For are we not also finally seeing the beginnings of a real democratic surge – a surge that might actually lead to taking back the Democratic Party from the neoliberals and billionaires?”

Kaye called on Americans to remember they are "heirs to the promise and project of the American Revolution," invoking Thomas Paine's declaration that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Kaye pointed to past national crises – the Civil War and the Great Depression – as models for how Americans previously responded to authoritarian threats, writing that each generation made the country "radically freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before."

“Reminding ourselves of all of that, and sensing the democratic possibilities that are emerging, let us toast the 250th with words from the man who first turned us into radicals,” Kaye wrote.

“Angered by misrepresentations of the American Revolution in a history published in 1782 by the famed French writer, Abbe Raynal, Paine replied, ‘It is yet too soon to write the history of the Revolution.’”

In Independence Eve Speech, Trump Warns of Communism Then Promotes One-Party Rule

“If we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act then we will not lose an election for a hundred years,” the president said.


US President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Mount Rushmore National Memorial on July 3, 2026 in Keystone, South Dakota.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Olivia Rosane
Jul 04, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump spent his address to the United States the night before its 250th birthday fearmongering about the “communist menace” and suggesting that his Republican Party should govern the nation for a century.

“America will never be a communist country,” he said from Mount Rushmore, South Dakota Friday night. “We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise. But if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act then we will not lose an election for a hundred years.”

His remarks clearly implied a false link between communism and the Democratic Party and promoted a bill that critics say will make it harder for millions of eligible voters to participate in elections. The SAVE America Act claims to address the documented non-problem of noncitizen voting by requiring voters to show documents such as passports and birth certificates, which can be expensive and difficult to obtain, especially for low-income voters. Such requirements would also impose added burdens on rural voters and married women who have changed their names.

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on social media that with his remarks, Trump was “clearly defining the effects of voter suppression bills.”

“What message could be more unifying on the nation’s 250th birthday weekend than touting one-party rule?” writer Michael Freeman posted on social media.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11) wrote: “The thing about Trump is he tells us what he wants & what he intends to do. He wants to end democracy. Freeze MAGA in power forever. Have zero accountability to the people. Just seize power & keep it. We are so close to true authoritarianism. We must use every ounce of power & leverage we have to stop them.”

Before arguing for 100 years of Republican rule, Trump continued the exaggerated anti-communist rhetoric he has employed in the weeks since progressive and Democratic-Socialist candidates won a series of Democratic primary victories.

“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” Trump said on Friday. “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”

In fact, the Democratic Socialists who won primary elections in New York City last month ran on a platform of affordable housing, Medicare for All, stronger unions, and an end to US military support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, policies backed by large numbers of ordinary Americans.

Trump doubled down on an opposition between communism and US values and also linked his anti-communist to his anti-immigrant stance, threatening to send communists into “exile.”

“You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both,” Trump said in a quote later posted from the White House X account.



“This July 4th, the Trump regime is pushing a new Red Scare. This is an actual White House post. The regime is pretending that communism is a serious threat to America,” Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior professional staffer on the January 6 Committee, responded on social media.

MeidasNews editor in chief Ron Filipkowski argued that Trump was leaning on anti-communism to divert attention from his own disastrous policies.

“Trump fucks up the economy with his tariffs, raises gas prices for every American with his foolish war, piles on to the national debt with his budget & wasteful spending on vanity projects, covers up Epstein, makes billions for himself, then starts yelling about communism to distract,” he wrote on social media.

Journalist Mark Chadbourn agreed, writing on social media that the speech reflected Trump’s “new strategy.”

“Now he’s failed completely abroad, he’s looking to the Enemy Within to create new Hate Figures to unite his wavering followers,” Chadbourn said. “Can’t stop Iran’s threat so let’s have a 2026 Red Scare to turn neighbour against neighbour. A new HUAC on the way? Very dangerous.”

Trump’s July 3 remarks contrasted with those of New York Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani earlier that day, who uplifted the country’s immigrant heritage, decried greed and racial supremacy, and argued that “time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”