{"id":346,"date":"2026-07-03T13:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=346"},"modified":"2026-07-03T13:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:38:08","slug":"america-was-never-a-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=346","title":{"rendered":"America Was Never a Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This Independence Day, we will tell ourselves a lot of stories about what it means to be American. One consistent narrative, however, even 250 years in, is our country\u2019s inability to reckon with the genocide of Indigenous people that kicked the whole thing off.<\/p>\n

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According to Rebecca Nagle, a citizen of Cherokee Nation, a writer and journalist, and the host of the new podcast First America<\/em>, the Founding Fathers initially faced an identity crisis. \u201cThey were in a tricky place: They\u2019re not English anymore, they\u2019re actually literally fighting a war to no longer be English, but they\u2019re not yet something else,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

So they reached for a symbol close at hand: that of Native people. Soon enough, Indigenous figures were appearing on Colonial American guns, pamphlets, and ships. Colonists even dressed up as Native Americans for the Boston Tea Party\u2014a practice that historian Philip Deloria refers to as \u201cplaying Indian.\u201d As Nagle puts it, \u201cPlaying Indian is kind of the bridge that gets them to this new American identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On a recent episode of What Next, Lizzie O\u2019Leary spoke to Nagle about how America\u2019s original sin is written into who we are today. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Lizzie O\u2019Leary: I want to talk about the Declaration of Independence. The part that so many Americans are taught in school is: \u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident \u2026 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.\u201d But in the <\/strong>first episode<\/strong> of First America<\/em>, you focus on a different part. Could you explain that to me?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rebecca Nagle:<\/strong> The part we all know is the part where Thomas Jefferson is pontificating about these enlightenment ideals. It\u2019s the preamble, kind of the introduction. But when you look at the document, it\u2019s actually just a list of grievances against King George III. I think of the declaration as a breakup letter. It\u2019s as if our Founding Fathers are breaking up with the king of England, and it\u2019s that part of the breakup when you tell the person you\u2019re breaking up with everything that they did wrong.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of historians who think that the list has an order, that it starts with the smaller grievances and ends with the things the founders were most angry about. And the last complaint, the crescendo in this long list, is about \u201cmerciless Indian savages.\u201d So, alongside those beautiful, lofty Enlightenment ideals, Native people are called \u201csavages,\u201d which was a way to say that we were actually less than human, that we weren\u2019t entitled to those basic human rights.<\/p>\n

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One of the main reasons colonists rebelled against the crown was that they wanted more Indigenous land\u2014they wanted to move farther west into North America, but the king was telling them no. That version of our origin doesn\u2019t fit nicely into the \u201ctaxation without representation\u201d\/independence\/democracy version of the story, but it\u2019s as much a part of the origin of the United States as the rest of that.<\/p>\n