I do not celebrate the fourth of July anymore and have not for many years. There are a number of reasons for my refusal to idolize a flag and the nation state where I was born. To start with, the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson and ratified by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 was a lie written by an enslaver and rapist.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Jefferson, like many of the so-called Founding Fathers, enslaved Africans and perpetuated that horror by ensuring that every child born of an enslaved woman was automatically enslaved at birth. this latter fact made raping slaves an economic incentive for plantation owners like Washington and Jefferson, and all others who owned the enslaved. It is clear that to Jefferson, not all men were actually created equal, and women don’t seem to have mattered at all because they had very few political rights. As enlightened as Jefferson may have been for his time, he was still a white supremacist who repeatedly raped Sally Hemings. White supremacy and rape violently violate human freedom and yet Jefferson had the temerity to proclaim that it the King of England was the only one engaging in tyranny when he wrote, “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” It shouldn’t need to be said that enslaving people because of their skin color and brutalizing those enslaved people for any perceived violation is far more tyrannical than any of those grievances Jefferson listed in the Declaration of Independence.

Of course, the British crown, parliament, and military did not just surrender their ill-gotten North American colonies without a fight. There was a long, brutal, and deadly war fought between the American “Patriots” and the British “Loyalists” from both sides of the Atlantic. As historian Alan Taylor notes in American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, elites on both sides held common people in contempt. George Washington stated that common folks from New England were “an exceedingly dirty and nasty people” with “an unaccountable kind of stupidity.” (Taylor, 142) Despite the elites’ attitudes towards average people, they still expected those common people to fight and die for their cause. Again Taylor notes that, “In fact, a small army of poor men sustained the Patriot cause by enduring years of hard duty and public neglect.” (Taylor, 198) It was the poor who suffered the most in war and because the Continental army also stole provisions, livestock, and other supplies whenever they could to supply the war effort at times leading to “poverty and distress,” (Taylor, 186) poverty increased for many.

The revolution also led to a great deal of mob violence enacted by patriot terrorists. From assaulting ministers and burning churches to fining pacifists and damaging their property, patriots were often no more than terrorists. Tarring and feathering, arson, and public mockery were common punishments for those who dissented. Loyalists were sometimes branded on the face by Patriot led courts or had their ears cut off to make them easily recognizable. Colonel Charles Lynch executed many loyalists by hanging them after sham trials. His infamy lives on in the verb “lynch” to this day. (Taylor, 224)

So much violence stemmed from the British colonization of North America and the subsequent dissolution of the political bands that tied the British government to the white male colonial elites. Those Patriot elites kept Africans enslaved, preyed and looked down upon the poor, and completely left women, free people of color, and Native Americans completely out of the political equation. To be sure, there were aspects of the American revolution and its aftermath that were progressive for that time, but not nearly enough to make up for those atrocities and sin mentioned above. Those sins committed against the marginalized by both sides have long been seen as violations of both Jewish and Christian teachings and bore terrible fruit. I’ll wait until America consistently lives up to the lofty rhetoric it espouses to celebrate a patriotic holiday…