The American Founding as Strategy
A few Fourth-of-July reflections on the political craft that shaped (and safeguarded) American liberty 🇺🇸
1) Adams and Jefferson represented an early form of the “unity ticket.” A straight-talking Puritan lawyer joined forces (with plenty of discord, of course) with a genteel Virginia planter proving that radicals and traditionalists could pull in the same harness. Every later balanced ticket: Lincoln–Johnson, Kennedy–LBJ, even Obama–Biden, traces back to this founding handshake.
2) The two-track persuasion of 1776 is baked into modern politics. Jefferson wrote for the ages; Adams spoke for the moment. Their split screen: serious text and fiery rhetoric—still frames US politics, from policy white papers that reassure investors to viral tweets that rally voters.
3) Common Sense, a libertarian pamphlet, was viral before virality was cool. Thomas Paine distilled high-minded Enlightenment theory into street-level prose, proving that big ideas win when you lower the cognitive on-ramp. Today’s “party of common sense” memes are direct heirs.
4) The colonists didn’t erase English liberty. They kept common law, jury trials, bicameralism, and even a dash of ceremonial monarchical flair for the President and the First Lady. American independence was evolutionary—freedom gained strategically without discarding proven customs.
5) Property rights lit the fuse of American independence. The 1761 writs of assistance—government barging into private warehouses—outraged merchants and farmers alike. “Natural rights” arguments grew from an instinct to defend lives, contracts, homes, and wallets.
6) Washington’s veterans formed an early trust network. Thirty-five of the fifty-five Convention delegates had worn the same uniform. Shared foxholes built a baseline of trust that allowed the Constitution to take shape faster than abstract poltical theory ever could.
7) The masterstroke of 1787 was branding. Hamilton’s camp replaced and relabeled “national” power as “federal,” flipping a friendly word for loose union among equals into a case for a sturdier center. It was a narrative clutch-play that was peaceful but decisive—while the Anti-Federalists secured the Bill of Rights as a libertarian compromise.
Zooming out: The year 1776 wasn’t a Tarantino-style crescendo. It was a Ken Burns-style capstone—slow-burning coalition-building, sparked by property-rights anxiety, amplified by Paine’s memetic genius, and grounded in the strategic repurposing of British legal traditions. The Founders didn’t just fight an empire; they out-organized it with narrative discipline—blending reverence for custom with a spirited vision of self-government. That fusion of freedom and heritage still lights the fuse for every generation that insists on both.
To the enduring experiment in ordered liberty: Happy Fourth of July.🇺🇸
