The founders fought tyrants, the morbidly rich, religious elites. Remind you of anyone?

The American Revolution wasn’t just a break from Britain — it was an uprising against three ancient tyrannies: warlord kings, the morbidly rich, and theocrats. Today, those same forces are clawing their way back into power, and if we don’t fight them now, everything the Founders built could collapse.

In the Declaration of Independence and throughout his years of personal correspondence, Thomas Jefferson (and multiple others among the Founders) identified three historic tyrannies that he and his colleagues fought the Revolutionary War to overthrow and replace with a democratic republic.

The first were the warlord kings, who’d been conquering nations and peoples for millennia and, by 1776, were considered “normal” by most citizens of the world. These were families who, in the earlier years of their countries, had acquired power by conquest: war, pillage, rape, and the subjugation of the people they’d vanquished.

These warlord kings justified their oppression by claiming their god had decreed their rule, that might makes right, and maintained their rule over generations by the threat of violence. In America’s case, we experienced increasing oppression and taxation throughout the rule of King George II, which got far worse when George III took over Great Britain in 1760.

The second were the morbidly rich, known in that era as lords and ladies, barons and dukes, earls, counts, marquess’, and princes and princesses. They were the owners of the East India Company, for example, against whom our revolution commenced with the Boston Tea Party in late 1773.

Jefferson and John Adams, in particular, had lengthy correspondences — often quoting the philosophers who inspired the Enlightenment — about how “the rich” always worked to corrupt popular governments and should never be trusted with control over America.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his 1762 Economie Politique, which inspired and informed our nation’s Founders, noted that the main job of a republic “is found in rendering justice to all, and especially in protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich.”

Jefferson (who died in bankruptcy) agreed. In a 1787 letter to Edward Carrington, he wrote:

“It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

In an 1816 letter to Samuel Kercheval, Jefferson amplified the point:

“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.”

And Rousseau was also echoed by Adams in a November 15, 1813 letter to Jefferson:

“When Aristocracies are established by human Laws and honour and Wealth and Power are made hereditary by municipal Laws and political Institutions, then I acknowledge artificial Aristocracy to commence: but this never commences, till Corruption in Elections become dominant and uncontroulable.”

The third tyranny that our Founding generation overthrew were the theocrats: the popes, mullahs, preachers, priests, and even the King proclaiming himself the head of the Church of England.

By the 1770s, rightwing Christians had largely taken over much of New England; they provoked a teenage Ben Franklin to flee Massachusetts for Philadelphia to get away from the mandatory Sunday church attendance and taxes to fund the clergy. In his book Toward the Mystery he wrote:

“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”

Similarly, Jefferson and Adams (among others) wrote at length about how the Christians of their day were constantly trying to corrupt government and what a battle they faced in that regard.

In the place of these three forms of government, the men who put together America proposed a constitutionally-limited democratic republic, a nation where the power rested with and was derived from the people themselves, rather than coming down from on-high kings, theocrats, or the morbidly rich.

Throughout the quarter-millennia of America’s existence, we’ve repeatedly had to fight back against warlords, plutocrats, and theocrats.

When a handful of wealthy families took over the South, the warlords of the Confederacy declared war on us. The morbidly rich have challenged our government multiple times, most famously during the Gilded Age, the Roaring 20s, and in the years since the Reagan Revolution. And preachers seeking political power have been a constant thorn in our side, from the Scopes Monkey Trial to today’s efforts to insert Christianity into our public schools, the Constitution be damned.

And here we are again.

We have a president who thinks of himself as the king of America, issuing proclamations as if he has a divine right. He’s an oligarch himself, and has built a corrupt alliance with other oligarchs in America, Russia, and around the world to enhance his own wealth and power. And since the days of Reagan the GOP has embraced the religious right, who now are so in thrall to the Republican Party that they can reliably hand electoral victories to rightwing candidates.

So, like our nation’s Founders, we must remember, resist, and reform.

We must remember the three historic tyrannies and teach our young people about them and the ever-present danger of their return. Promote history and civics. Remind people of the oppression our forebears faced. Update our educational system so the true history of our nation can be taught.

We must resist Trump’s and the GOP’s efforts to turn America into an oligarchic, theocratic, neofascist kingdom. Show up in the streets. Contact your elected representatives (Congress’ number is 202-224-3121) all the way down to local officials and let them know you want a democratic republic. Show up for public meetings like school boards, county commissions, city councils, etc., and demand an end to big money’s, big defense contractors’, and big religion’s control over our political system.

And we must reform America’s political system that’s been captured over the past 50 years by massive transnational corporations and the billionaire class. Get money out of politics. Overturn Citizens United. Make voting a right rather than a mere privilege.

If we fail, two-and-a-half centuries of blood, sweat, and tears will have been wasted as America slips into the type of warlord/oligarch/theocrat capture that’s been the fate of Russia, Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, and so many other formerly democratic nations.

But if we succeed, we’ll have a serious opportunity to finally make America a fully inclusive nation, a beacon of liberty, and a “land of the free and home of the brave” we can all be proud of.

That’s worth fighting for with everything we have. See you in the streets on No Kings Day…

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