Never Was And Never Will Be

In a reflective letter written in 1818 to a Mr. H. Niles, John Adams asked, “What was the Revolution?” What answer would you give John Adams?

I ask because this Saturday we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial of Independence in 1976 (see the image above). Or look at these images. Most Americans were proud to be Americans. We recognized America’s moral failings but noted its virtues as well.

This year’s celebration feels different. An increasing number of Americans, especially younger generations, are familiar with many of America’s moral failings but seem ignorant of its virtues. Thomas Jefferson saw that as a problem: “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be.”

Our ignorance of America’s revolutionary founding is well documented in The Vanishing West from the National Association of Scholars. But if you want to zero in on a recent example, consider this review of 96 articles published in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association.

Published by the Johns Hopkins University, American Quarterly is widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies. Look at what it’s teaching American students. The reviewers found that, of the 96 articles examined, 77 were identified as critical, focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. That’s 80 percent of the 96 articles reviewed.

One essay posited that thermodynamics – the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature – is “an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.”

That’s absurd.

The reviewers found that 20 percent of the articles on America were neutral, and 0 percent were positive. Zero. Small wonder they argue American studies as an academic discipline paints a “one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait” of the nation.

Which might explain why World Cup visitors expected to find the US to be a dark and brooding nation. They were instead shocked to discover a delightful nation filled with absolutely wonderful people. One young man in his 20s exclaimed: “I would trade my Canadian passport for American citizenship without hesitating a single second.”

All Americans would benefit from gaining a balanced view of the American Revolution. I recommend Rick Atkinson’s “The British Are Coming,” the first in his planned Revolution Trilogy. It begins not in Boston or, for that matter, anywhere in America, but in England at the desk of George III. The king had come to see war with America as inevitable.

As did a growing number of Americans as Atkinson recounts what happens before the first shots are fired at the Battle of Lexington (1775).

Which brings us back to John Adams’s question: “What do We mean by the Revolution? The War?” He answered his own question by writing:

That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.

If you want to know how the Revolution developed in the minds and hearts of the people over the course of those fifteen years, read Atkinson’s book. It’ll help you see why most Americans, nurtured on a one-sided, negative portrait of America, are ignorant yet expect to be free. In the history of civilization that never was and never will be.