Policy / January 2, 2026
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, remember the founder who rallied the people against the British and American oligarchs.
Thomas Paine.(World History Archives via Getty Images) The 250th anniversary of the American experiment, celebrated this year, will certainly be the scene of a struggle for the history – and future – of the United States.
On one side will be the supporters of unconstrained capitalism, Christian nationalism and colonial conquest. They will offer an ahistorical apology for Donald Trump’s bedraggled presidency and for a servile Republican Congress that is increasingly at risk of being stripped of power by the enraged electorate in November. These retro-royalists will see no irony in the fact that the American Revolution – at its best and most inspired –rejected the monarchical abuses of a liege lord who organized the affairs of state to rob the poor and fill his own treasuries, presided over an empire that imposed its rule through military might, and imagined that he ruled by “divine right” as the “supreme governor» of an established state church.
On the other side of contemporary Conservatives will be Americans who have actually read the Declaration of Independencewhich opens with what represented at the time a radical embrace of democracy:
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 purposes, the people have the right to modify or abolish it and to establish a new government, establishing its own rights. founded on such principles, and organizing its powers in such a form, that they seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Today’s anti-royalists recognize that the promise of the Declaration, beginning with the premise that all human beings are created equal – has never been fully realized. They know that over 25 decades, powerful elites have often maintained only the facade of representative democracy while permitting first human subjugation, then economic oppression, savage inequality and governance corruption warped by money, gerrymandering, and an electoral college. The most cynical oligarchs and authoritarians of this century could pledge allegiance to the Constitution. But their business mission has always been to manipulate the levers of government, economics and religion to empower and enrich themselves.
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In 2026, oligarchs and their apologists will seek to use the celebration of America’s birthday to strengthen their grip on the economy and government. They will insist that the United States was created as an ultra-capitalist state in which billionaires can capture an AI bubble enough to become billionaires. But as a frequent author and commentator on U.S. history, Thom Hartmann noted“The word ‘capitalism’ appears nowhere in our founding documents, nowhere in our Constitution.” Most importantly, the Constitutional Accountability Center reminds us“The Constitution guarantees the rights of “persons” and “citizens”, without ever referring to the protection of “companies”. » And the constitutionalist John Bonifaz explained that “the Creators understood that [corporations] should not be treated as persons under our Constitution. James Madison declared that business is “a necessary evil” subject to “proper limitations and guards.” Thomas Jefferson hoped to “crush at its birth the aristocracy of our wealthy societies.”
Christian nationalists and their political allies will tell us that the United States is a “Christian nation” and should be governed as such, even if the founders recognized religious diversity and disdained the notion of an established church. explained in a letter to Danbury Baptists:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which concerns only man and his God, that he is accountable to no one for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government result only in actions and not in opinions, I contemplate with sovereign respect this act of the whole American people who declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus constructing a wall of separation between the Church and the State.
War hawks and their allies in the military-industrial complex will excuse the imperial ambitions of a president who has rejected international treaties, altered maps to rename the Gulf of Mexico, bombed Venezuelan ships without congressional authorization, and exposed his illicit claims to Greenland with a blunt declaration: “we must have it.”
For years, Trump and his associates while trying to prevent accurate teaching of U.S. history. It does not serve their purposes to remind people that this country was founded by a popular rebellion that embraced “No kings!” message from Thomas Paine. The pamphleteer showed no respect for the king, the kaiser or the tsar, and disparaged any suitor who formally crowned his authoritarianism as “nothing better than the chief thug of a restless band, whose wild manners or pre-eminence in subtlety earned him the title of leader among the plunderers.”
Paine, the founder who best understood the purpose of the revolution, wrote: “An honest man is of more value to society and in the sight of God than all the crowned thugs who ever lived.” »
This democratic impulse has always been part of American history, even if it has been suppressed by the oligarchs who would have us believe that a president – as the unconstitutional majority of the current Supreme Court imagines – is a king for four years who cannot be held responsible for his actions.official acts.”
Trump and his apologists serve at least one purpose as the United States enters its half-century. Their anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian extremism, cynicism and hypocrisy expose them as fraudulent claimants to the most vital legacy of the American Revolution. While there have always been elites—including many of the Founders—who chose to rewrite history in their favor, there have also always been champions of liberty who know that Paine spoke the true language of American independence. when he wrote 250 years ago: “O you who love humanity! You who dare to oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, arise!”
If ever there was a time to stand up, it’s now, in the anniversary year of America’s founding. This is the time to use the rights set forth in the First Amendment – to speak, write, assemble, and seek redress of grievances – to raise a Paine-inspired objection to imperialism, colonialism, and clericalism and to make an honest demand for freedom and economic, social, and racial justice for all. This year we must seek to secure the next 250 years against the demands of monarchical elites and to meet the needs of the great multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious mass of Americans.
John Nichols John Nichols is the editor-in-chief of The Nation. He was previously the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, co-authored or edited more than a dozen books on topics ranging from the history of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyzes of American and global media systems. His latest, co-written with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It’s okay to be angry at capitalism.