Do not be surprised if you see me “celebrating” the 4th of July with friends, but do not mistake this for approval of what the holiday represents. This holiday—like many other secular holidays—does not earn my observance or celebration.
Why the disdain for the 4th of July? The 4th of July celebrates the establishment of a government far more onerous than the British crown. The so-called “War for Independence” was not a war for independence, but a war for dependence on a new regime.
In the article, “The American Revolution Was a Mistake,” Gary North raises the point that the burden of the national debt, taxation, and inflation were much greater as a result of the American Revolution. I highly recommend that you read his piece before finishing mine.
Even if those statistics do not mean anything to you, where is independence today? Do you feel free? Probably not. Regulations weigh you down. Taxation is confusing and burdensome. Inflation has silently eliminated your spending power. Generations of your descendants have been indebted through the accumulation of the national debt and government action encouraging people to take on debt. All while the American people have either been complicit and/or ineffective at preventing the slide into tyranny (with few exceptions). In light of these things, celebrating the 4th of July is nothing but a sick joke.
Let’s examine other reasons to oppose the American Revolution.
Revolutions Are Immoral
Romans 13:1-7 states:
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will [a]bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.
Some Christian libertarians have employed mental gymnastics to escape this commitment; however, the meaning is plain–submit. Of course, Christians can disobey the government when obeying government would mean the disobedience of God. That is why many martyrdoms occur–because Christians continued to worship their God despite the persecutions by governments.
The prohibition of revolution, being the inspired word of God, would have been made with the foreknowledge of the persecution of Christians under Nero and Domitian. If this verse was not meant to apply to these persecutions, which were on the horizon, then there would have been some exception in the text. We find no such exception in the text.
Furthermore, Clement of Rome–a church father–affirms that Corinth had a good reputation among the other churches because it submitted itself to the civil authorities, among other reasons (1 Clement 1:3). This was during a time in which the church was facing persecution.
With all of this in mind, if it is good for Christians to submit to the civil authorities even during times of great persecution in which it is illegal to be a Christian, then why would a significantly lesser persecution, such as that which the colonies were experiencing under the British warrant revolution?
Christians were prohibited from worshipping God in Rome. To obey such an edict, they would have had to violate the great command to love God, and the first and second commandments of the Ten Commandments. If these Christians are obligated to submit to the civil authorities on all other matters even when that government is mandating some of the gravest of sins, then there is no reason that the American revolutionaries could invoke to justify their rebellion.
Revolution and Self-Interest
In my article, “An Economic Analysis of Romans 13,” I raise attention to the collective action problem inherent in revolutions.
Essentially rebellions become a prisoner’s dilemma. The effect of the marginal revolutionary is close to zero, so the revolutionary, compelled by the high cost of participation in the rebellion, opts out of the revolutionary activity, choosing instead to free ride off the effort of others. Since the actor will receive the benefits of successful rebellion whether he engages in the revolution or not, he chooses not to participate. Given that everyone faces this tradeoff, the rebellion will not occur, and anyone who engages in rebellion will fail, be rounded up, and killed…By giving [selective] benefits to revolutionaries that exceed the base payoff that everyone gets from the overthrow of the old regime, potential participants will opt to partake in the revolution to obtain these benefits they would not otherwise get.
This can be done through giving state privileges to those who participated in the revolution. By doing so, revolution participants are spurred out of docility and are more inclined to aid in throwing off the yoke of their oppressors.1
In the context of the American Revolution, this is why taxation, debt, and inflation were necessary—to give revolution participants selective benefits at the expense of non-revolution participants.
I further note in the article above,
Individuals, like Robert Morris, exploited the Revolution as means of making profit from the Continental Congress; therefore, expropriating the American taxpayer. Expropriating the taxpayer definitely secured Morris’ cooperation though. The Congress also pushed soft-money policies to finance their war, no doubt directing the new money to its revolutionaries and the Revolution’s benefactors.
Gary North also notes,
That the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence was signed by the richest smuggler in North America was no coincidence. He was hopping mad. Parliament in 1773 had cut the tax on tea imported by the British East India Company, so the cost of British tea went lower than the smugglers' cost on non-British tea. This had cost Hancock a pretty penny. The Tea Party had stopped the unloading of the tea by throwing privately owned tea off a privately owned ship -- a ship in competition with Hancock's ships. The Boston Tea Party was in fact a well-organized protest against lower prices stemming from lower taxes.
The organizers and participants of the revolution clearly gained at the expense of the public.
Furthermore, given that revolutions typically require expropriation through aggression to fund, the governments that are established through revolution are predicated on the very things which libertarians and Christians should be against—violence and government abuse.
Monarchy and Democracy
Democracy or republicanism is also celebrated on the 4th of July, but this veneration is typically uncritical. To the contrary, whether monarchy or democracy is better for liberty depends on the context.
Mancur Olson, with respect to autocrats (or monarchs) states, “a stationary bandit has an encompassing interest in the territory he controls and accordingly provides domestic order and other public goods. Thus he is not like the wolf that preys on the elk, but more like the rancher who makes sure that his cattle are protected and given water.”
Likewise, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his book Democracy: The God that Failed, makes the argument that monarchies, being the exclusive claimant to tax revenues in a geographical region, will choose to extract less in the present—allowing the taxpayers of the geographic region to save more of their money and prosper. This is because the greater return in the future as a result of greater saving and investment is secure. If the return was not secure, they would be inclined to extract more in the present.
Under democracy, the time horizons of elected officials are shortened, and they have other political agents vying for the same resources. The result? In democracies or representative democracies, the political agents extract more in the present.
Of course, democracies can increase the collective decision-making costs of a government extracting from a populace. Taking a vote is a greater restriction on decision making than the cost a pure autocrat would face.
Given the expansion of government as a result of the Revolution mentioned earlier, it is unclear whether the establishment of representative democracy was an improvement on the monarchy, but it should at least make us raise an eyebrow when people claim that the American form of government is superior to that of the British crown.
Conclusion
There is undoubtedly more that can be said, but I think I have given enough to think about as you eat hotdogs and set off fireworks.
Ultimately, the American Revolution—more accurately the American Coup—is far from the romanticized rebellion discussed in public school textbooks. This coup was a transfer of power from one criminal organization to another criminal organization; it was immoral and had negative consequences that we are still feeling today.
So, no, I will not celebrate the 4th of July.
These insights come from Gordon Tullock, Mancur Olson, and Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard.