The American Revolution Isn't Over
What the left has said
Inferred left“Revolutionary ideals of liberty used to justify limiting government protections, critics say”
From a left-leaning vantage point, invoking the American Revolution as a libertarian document is a familiar move with a troubling history. The founders' language of liberty coexisted with slavery, the exclusion of women from political life, and the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Progressives typically argue that the Revolution's promises were incomplete at birth and have only been extended through collective struggle, not by shrinking government. Framing federal authority as a betrayal of revolutionary ideals, in this view, tends to serve those who benefit from the status quo and resist the structural changes needed to make those ideals real for everyone. The left would read Reason's both-sides critique as a libertarian move that treats the right's nationalism and the left's push for expanded rights as equivalent threats, a framing that obscures which communities bear the cost of under-regulated markets and concentrated private power.
What the right says
Lean right“American founding principles under threat from big government overreach, Reason warns”
Conservatives and libertarians share real ground on the Reason argument, even if they part ways at the edges. The core claim, that the Revolution stood for limiting government power, individual freedom, and resistance to centralized authority, maps comfortably onto the right's long-running critique of administrative expansion. Where It challenges the right is on executive power and nationalism: Reason insists that a genuine heir to the founders cannot simultaneously celebrate the Constitution and cheer for a muscular presidency or a government-directed economy. Right-leaning readers would likely embrace the critique of the left's regulatory ambitions while pushing back on the suggestion that today's conservative movement has its own fidelity problem. For libertarian-right audiences, It is a useful reminder that the Revolution was, at its core, a tax revolt and a declaration against overreach, whichever party happens to be doing the reaching.