As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the meaning of its founding narrative is increasingly contested.
The traditional pillars of that story—freedom, democracy, and progress—have come under strain amid growing wealth inequality, civil rights setbacks, and unpopular wars.
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Writing during World War I, intellectual Randolph Bourne described the American revolutionary inheritance as a “squalid marriage between the town capitalist and plantation patriarch.”
He argued that glittering generalities about freedom and democracy were marked by their captivity to money counters and owners of human chattel.
Today, with Donald Trump as a leading political figure, Bourne’s critique resonates.
The mobilization of market frenzy, war machinery, deportation campaigns, and nativist passions define an era of social fracture and moral failure.
The US origin story will be retold with fanfare, dressed in Christian nationalism and militarism, but drained of its world-making power—the idea that “the cause of America is the cause of all mankind,” as Thomas Paine wrote in 1776.
From Universalist Narrative to Fractured Consensus
Not long ago, the redemptive idea of America still resonated.
On his election night in 2008, Barack Obama framed his victory as narrowing the gap between democratic ideals and flawed reality.
He celebrated ordinary people as authors of “our better history,” linking women’s suffrage, the New Deal, civil rights, and marriage equality in a continuous march toward a “more perfect union.”
That universalist narrative emerged during World War II, advancing anti-fascist and anti-racist claims that gained sway even among conservative elites.
