"One Reason the Revolution Disappoints Is Because We Assume It Ended Too Soon"

"Yet Richards's final plea is still worth heeding: 'a narrative of the American Revolution that only criticizes is a poor replacement for a narrative that only celebrates.' It may simply be that history books are not the best place to look for this 'usable past,' as historians call it. In many ways, ordinary Americans are already doing that work themselves. You see one version in MAGA's appropriation of Revolutionary symbols, from the 'Don't Tread On Me' flag to the movement's Tea Party roots. But the impulse appears on the left as well. Bernie Sanders frequently invokes the Founders in his fight against oligarchy, even casting his first presidential campaign as part of an ongoing 'political revolution' that 'never ends.' Mainstream liberals, too, seem to have caught the Revolutionary spirit: What is the protest slogan 'No Kings,' after all, if not a reminder that the founding still resonates, and might not be as distant as it seems?"

Eric Herschthal at The New Republic reviews Nathan Perl-Rosenthal's The Long Revolution: Creating a United States after 1776 and Thomas Richards, Jr.'s The Unfinished Business of 1776: Why the American Revolution Never Ended.