The article argues that the American Left should reclaim the radical legacy of the 1776 revolution rather than ceding it to conservatives as an inherently fraudulent project. Historically, figures from Eugene Debs to the Black Panthers successfully weaponized the promise of the Declaration of Independence to challenge oppression and hierarchy. Reclaiming this anti-monarchical inheritance is essential for confronting modern centers of power, from corporate monopolies to authoritarian politicians.
**THE DAILY STAR**
*The Paper for the Working Man—Five Cents*
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### **RED FLAG OR RED, WHITE, AND BLUE?**
#### **“GENE” DEBS’ GHOST HAUNTS THE PARLOR PINKS!**
#### **Firebrand Socialist Claimed 1776 as Labor’s Own—Why Today’s Radicals are Throwing the Star-Spangled Banner in the Ash-Can and Making a Dope’s Mistake!**
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**CHICAGO, Ill.** — “I like the Fourth of July! It breathes the very spirit of revolution!”
So roared Eugene V. Debs, the fiery apostle of the working man, back in the hot summer of ’01. The red-flag-waving agitator wasn’t one to fall for cheap, flag-waving ballyhoo—he told his listeners plain as day, “I am not of those who worship the flag.” But "Gene" Debs was too smart to let the bosses, the reactionaries, and the Wall Street fat cats walk away with the American Revolution in their pockets.
To hear Debs tell it, he was the true-blue heir to a grand old American tradition of troublemaking. He wasn’t peddling some foreign poison imported from across the pond; he was calling on the spirits of John Brown, Thaddeus Stevens, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Jefferson himself! He didn’t want these historical big-wigs cast in cold marble—he wanted to finish their business.
But today? The parlor pinks and high-brow intellectuals of the twenty-first century are turning up their noses at the Fourth of July. They claim the whole American experiment is nothing but capitalistic bunk.
We say: **That’s a bum steer!**
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### **THE REAL MCCOY OF ’76**
The socialist case for 1776 isn’t that the Founders were saints. Far from it! Plenty of ’em were slaveholders, land speculators, and high-hat creditors whose idea of "liberty" stopped right at the edge of their own bank accounts.
But the Revolution wasn't just some tax dodge cooked up by sore Boston merchants. It was a knock-down, drag-out fight against the British Crown, argued in smoky taverns, church pews, and radical pamphlets before a single shot was fired. It was a grand proclamation that no man is born with boots and spurs to ride another!
Look no further than Thomas Paine, America’s original soapbox populist. In his smash-hit pamphlet *Common Sense*, Paine didn’t mince words. He called the King of England “the Royal Brute of Britain” and declared monarchy “the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot!”
That little booklet packed a wallop! It sold over 100,000 copies in a few short months—a real best-seller in a nation of only two-and-a-half million souls. John Adams himself admitted that without Paine’s sharp pen, George Washington’s sword would have been raised in vain.
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### **WORDS THAT BURNED THE BOSSES**
Then you’ve got the Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal”—penned by Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder! It’s the ultimate American hypocrisy, but those words have been burning a hole in the pockets of the ruling class ever since.
The radical abolitionist Frederick Douglass didn't throw the Declaration in the gutter. In 1852, he beat the country over the head with it, demanding the fat cats live up to their own promise! At Seneca Falls in ’48, the suffragettes sat down and crossed out “King George,” putting “man” in his place to demand the vote. Even the militant Black Panthers, who wouldn't be caught dead at a high-society tea party, pasted the Declaration right at the end of their Ten-Point Program. They knew you could indict the American bosses using their own deck of cards!
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### **THE INTELLECTUALS GET IT ALL BALLED UP**
For fifty years now, the high-brow Left has treated America like it’s rotten to the core. By doing so, they’ve handed 1776 over to the conservatives on a silver platter. The Right has turned the Revolution into cheap, patriotic hokum—all powdered-wig memes and decorative muskets.
Just look at Donald Trump, the big-city tycoon who set up his “1776 Commission” to peddle dry, patriotic Sunday-school lessons to schoolkids, painting progressives and unionists as foreign devils.
But Trump had a perfect foil. The high-brows at the *New York Times* came out with their “1619 Project,” claiming the country’s true founding was the arrival of the first slave ship, and that the Revolution was just a racket to protect slavery.
**What a load of hooey!**
Sure, slavery is the dark stain on our history. But to say Paine’s fight against the King was just a smoke screen for slaveholders is to miss the whole parade. Even Karl Marx—the Red Pope himself—wrote to Honest Abe Lincoln during the Civil War, cheering on the fight and predicting that just as 1776 raised up the middle class, the war against slavery would raise up the working class!
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### **NO KINGS, NO BOSSES!**
Lately, the tide is turning again. Average citizens are out on the pavement chanting “No Kings!” to protest Trump’s imperial ambitions, waving the old “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.
It’s a bit of a laugh to see the liberals in powdered wigs, but the slogan works because it hits a nerve. No kings! No rulers by birthright! No bosses who treat the law like a plaything and their workers like dirt!
The job of the working man today isn't to let the high-hatters keep the flag. It’s to take Debs' advice and demand the Revolution go all the way.
The promise of 1776 doesn't stop at the White House doors. It belongs in the factory, the tenement house, and the bank! If no man is born to rule another, then that goes for the landlord and the monopolist just as much as King George!
Uncle Sam’s 250th birthday is just around the corner, and the modern autocrats are acting like royalty. **We ask you: What would Tom Paine do?**