An Independence Day Without Common Sense ^9.3%

Jacobin - By Maxwell G. Burkey - 7/3/2026, 8:42 AM

Framing Effect 15% - Hasty Generalization 11.7% - Negativity Bias 4.7%

This 250th year of American independence has seen no shortage of paeans to Thomas Paine, the high priest of the American Revolution. Organs of liberal-left politics from the Atlantic to the New York Times to the Nation have implored a return to Paine and his 1776 tract, Common Sense, in our moment of democratic peril. Meanwhile, a widely... more