Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July!

Regardless on what one may think of the current state of capitalist rule in the US, I agree with the assessment of revolutionary character of, well, the American Revolution. The legacy of tyranny haunts us still, and although bourgeois democracy is in many ways a potent combatant versus reactionary traditionalism, we still have a long way to go.

From the Socialist Equality Party's 2006 candidate for the NY Senate, Bill Van Auken:

This July 4 marks the 230th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that launched a revolution against colonialism and despotism, inspiring peoples all over the world. The creation of a new nation, founded on Enlightenment concepts of democracy, equality and the rule of law, foreshadowed the French Revolution 13 years later and had international reverberations for generations thereafter.

The document signed in 1776 had a profoundly liberating character, proclaiming the right of the people—not only in America, but everywhere—to employ revolutionary means to dislodge governments that trampled on their “unalienable rights.”

Those who led the insurrection against the British monarch were quite conscious of the international implications of their actions and the world historic significance of the Declaration. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams—both, in a poignant and fitting historical coincidence, were to die on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—“The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”

World Socialist Web Site: The 4th of July Holiday...