Over the past few months, amid Americans’ frustration with Donald Trump’s administration, a comment that keeps popping up across social media is: “The French would have burned everything down by now.” It’s a way of evoking the French Revolution as the epitome of the people’s struggle for rights. And yet, Americans seem to be forgetting the plot. After all, the first declaration of a people’s independence from a king’s tyranny and the first articulation of the rights of all human beings took place, in fact, in the then-American colonies.

Before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, Thomas Paine had inspired all those suffering under the British Crown’s taxes with his pamphlet Common Sense. “A government of our own is our natural right,” he wrote. “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘TIS TIME TO PART.’”

Americans had their revolution first. So why are they citing Paris?

I don’t know if it’s because the U.S. government has censored literature or because the educational system has been systematically eroded, but Americans seem unaware that the American Revolution took place between 1775 and 1783, while the French Revolution occurred between 1789 and 1799. Although both revolutions focused on overthrowing unjust monarchies, the Americans announced their democratic project to the world before anyone else.

Enlightenment ideas such as natural rights and popular sovereignty, the concept that a government’s power comes from the people, fueled both. Similarly, both uprisings were costly, economically driven, and profoundly shaped by the political writings of philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both nations faced severe financial crises: the American colonists protested British taxes, while the French commoners rebelled against widespread poverty, unfair tax systems, and extreme wealth inequality.

Will Americans remember what they are celebrating this July 4th, 250 years after independence?

Don’t get me wrong. Nothing was perfect at first. The American Revolution was a war for independence; it largely left existing local social structures intact, including slavery. So, in reality, not all men were created equal in the eyes of the Founding Fathers. In contrast, the French Revolution was a radical social upheaval intended. The French people wanted to completely destroy the old class system and the nobility.

What happened next was also radically different. The American Revolution created a stable democratic republic under the United States Constitution. The French Revolution descended into chaos and violence during the Reign of Terror. This eventually led to a dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte.

Two hundred and fifty years later, what did America do with its own blueprint?

Now, as the United States has spent generations indoctrinating its citizens with the rhetoric of patriotism and the idea of “the best country in the world,” the fabric of American society is unraveling.

The American Revolution gave birth to the United States. It created a global blueprint for democratic governance and spurred worldwide movements for liberty. These sweeping achievements, though, came at a severe human cost. This included intense short-term economic depression, the devastation of Indigenous communities, and the entrenchment of slavery for nearly a century.

The Revolution sparked the “Age of Revolution,” directly inspiring subsequent democratic movements worldwide, including the French and Haitian revolutions. At the same time, the expansion of the new republic led to the mass displacement of Indigenous tribes. Many of them had sided with the British in the hope of halting colonial westward expansion.

The Revolution also established the United States as an independent republic. It replaced a hereditary monarchy with a government based on the consent of the governed, formalized by the U.S. Constitution. The war effort, however, caused extreme inflation and disrupted global supply chains. It shrank the colonial gross domestic product by nearly 30% and triggered a severe post-war depression. And while revolutionary ideals of liberty sparked the earliest organized abolitionist movements, the institution of slavery was preserved and codified, laying the groundwork for the Civil War.

Maybe read the declaration before you light the fireworks

Perhaps what we need to celebrate this July 4th is the original, albeit flawed, seed that gave rise to the United States of America, rather than the outdated charade of the Star-Spangled Banner. That document, which Thomas Jefferson put to paper inspired by Locke’s ideas, celebrated “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and, in particular, proclaimed the right “of the people to alter or to abolish” a bad government.

For, as Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

Tags: 4th of July, America