Almost 250 years ago, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed the United States an independent country. Having rid themselves of a king, the revolutionaries established a republican government that derived its authority from the consent of the governed.
Today, as we approach the Declaration of Independence’s semiquincentennial, Donald Trump and his allies claim the Revolution for themselves. They have made fealty to the American Revolution part of their culture war against “woke” progressivism. The Revolution has become a pawn in Trump’s politics of retribution against the country’s supposed cultural enemies. Trump and his allies claim to be patriots while regularly violating the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and undermining the government established by our Constitution. Trump’s actions since his reelection have all but destroyed the republic the founding generation fought to establish two and a half centuries ago.
Those of us who still believe in the ideals of the Revolution need to reclaim it from Trumpian pretenders. We need to remember not just the revolutionary generation’s principles but also the courage they exhibited when they stood up to tyranny. Today, allegiance to the Revolution requires being willing to do what is necessary to stop Trump’s authoritarian coup and to restore constitutional governance.
According to Trump, the American Revolution is fragile. Beleaguered by its enemies, a revolution in the name of popular self-government now needs a strongman to protect it from “a concerted and widespread effort” by progressive historians “to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” in the words of Trump’s March 27, 2025, executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Trump says—with no apparent sense of irony, given his earlier statement, “I have the right to do whatever I want as president”—that the American Revolution stands for “liberty, individual rights, and human happiness.”
Trump’s executive orders on history reflect the ideas expressed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, according to which the United States is “divided between two opposing forces: woke revolutionaries and those who believe in the ideals of the American revolution.” To the radicals at Heritage, we are in a civil war that, according to the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, requires “real Americans to take back our country,” even, it seems, if that means violating the very ideals that they supposedly support.
For Trump, Roberts, and their allies, the actual principles of the Revolution matter less than its capacity to signify tribal loyalty by distinguishing “real Americans” from domestic enemies. Trump conflates respect for the Revolution with loyalty to him. The gross spectacle of Trump hosting a military parade on his birthday—as do kings and dictators—and connecting it to the birth of the Continental Army illustrates all too well that he seeks to legitimize his own rule by wrapping himself in the Revolution.
Trump has found accomplices for his abuse of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Hillsdale College’s president, political scientist Larry Arnn, chaired the President’s 1776 Commission, the White House’s official response to The New York Times’ 1619 Project. Now the White House is working with Hillsdale to offer videos that provide the administration’s official take on the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary.
The first video, available on the White House website, is chock-full of reverence, not just for the Revolution but for Trump himself. Trump, Arnn proclaims, wants to celebrate the declaration’s 250th anniversary with “an open heart.” Arnn then obsequiously praises Trump’s use of the word “again,” coyly referring to Trump’s “famous slogan.” According to Arnn, Trump is restoring the country (again) to its founding principles. Arnn thus compares Trump to Lincoln, who in a prior time of crisis asked Americans to remember their deepest values. Turning to the declaration, Arnn calls it “beautiful,” “grand and eternal and eloquent,” while lush background music overwhelms the viewer with emotion. It is as if the Hillsdale keepers of the past think the Revolution can be approached only by groveling and puerile storytelling.
The American Revolution is worthy of our admiration because it is built of sturdier stuff. It does not matter whether conservative ideals and policies are good or bad, popular or unpopular, if they are imposed on Americans unlawfully and arbitrarily. A free society is ruled by law. Democratic politics require persuasion, not coercion. Conservative defenders of the Revolution like those at Hillsdale ask Americans to worship the Revolution while they desecrate it. They condemn progressive critics while engaging in their own form of iconoclasm. They refuse to admit what common sense cannot deny: Given Trump’s lawlessness, we no longer have a legitimate government.
A close reading of the Declaration of Independence demonstrates that if the Founders were alive today, they would probably be doing all they could to remove Trump from office. The declaration affirms 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.” It then turns to the origins and purpose of legitimate governments: “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The heart of the declaration, however, is devoted to a third point, one all too relevant today: how and when governments lose their legitimate authority. Governments are not dissolved “for light and transient causes” but only “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” If the evidence all points in the same direction, then the people can and must act to defend their liberties. That’s why the rest of the declaration—the bulk of the text—laid out the king’s “long train of abuses and usurpations” to demonstrate that he sought “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.” A large number of the grievances concern the right of the Colonial legislatures to meet and consent to laws and taxation. To our Founders, there was a causal relationship between legislative consent and liberty. Today, we often think freedom is the ability to do what one wants. To our Founders, in contrast, freedom was a collective possession, not a private one. Freedom was only possible in a free state in which the people or their representatives actively made the rules that govern their shared life.
The primary goal of the declaration, then, was to prove “to a candid world” that the king of Great Britain had continuously and regularly placed his will above the law by bypassing the constitutional authority of the Colonial legislatures and violating English liberties. As a result, the colonists were absolved of their allegiance to him. The declaration thus concludes, “a Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
By disregarding Congress and repeatedly violating laws, Trump has produced a revolutionary crisis much like the one the colonists faced 250 years ago. He, too, is unfit to rule over a free people. We are thus in a much more serious situation than many politicians or journalists will admit: The scale of Trump’s crimes against American liberties rival those of king and Parliament in the 1770s.
Trump’s violations of the Constitution are too long to list here, but among them are illegally suspending laws and violating court orders. He has sought to dominate the other two branches of government by encouraging extralegal violence against legislators, judges, and their families. He has weaponized the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. He threatens the media, universities, and other civil society institutions that dare to question his edicts. Indeed, he seeks to destroy any person or institution that checks his will. He has transported innocent people beyond seas without due process. Trump is now seeking to turn local police against the communities they are supposed to serve and has placed armed troops among us. He has used his office to enrich himself at the public’s expense.
Taken together, Trump’s actions, enabled by the Republican Party, have brought about, as former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote in The Atlantic, “the end of rule of law in America.” Drawing on the ideas of John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government, America’s Founding Fathers believed that when an executive no longer upholds the rule of law, he loses constitutional authority. In the 1770s, Americans applied Locke’s ideas to the king’s actions. We must do the same today, no matter how frightening. By so blatantly violating his oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Trump is no longer a constitutional president. In Locke’s framework, he is a private person—just like a thief—from whom the people have the right to protect themselves.
Trump’s lawless actions must be stopped before it is too late to save our republic. We may need the courage the patriots mustered 250 years ago. As the colonists proved, the people can resist even the most powerful of tyrants. And they are. On the streets, ordinary Americans are gathering and carrying signs proclaiming “No Kings In America Since 1776.” They demand that we live in a society governed by laws rather than by men. They are true patriots.
Trump and his allies distort the past to convince their followers that respecting the American Revolution is somehow compatible with supporting a tyrant. They want to turn the Revolution into a symbol for tribal loyalty, but the Revolution belongs to all Americans. The United States was born from a revolt against lawless tyranny and arbitrary power. Today, future generations of Americans are counting on us to protect the republic. Like those who sacrificed so much to secure our freedom two and a half centuries ago, once again we Americans must pledge our sacred honor to uphold the legacy of the American Revolution from those who invoke it only to betray it.
