The left has tried its best to tarnish our national story. But Americas 250th is the perfect opportunity to dig into our real history

As they attached their signatures to the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, the founders knew they were risking all.Bucking the king was treason, punishable by death.Writing to John Adams in 1811, Dr.

Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia’s leading physician, recalled the “pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants.”The Declaration’s clarion calls — that all men are created equal, that our rights come not from man or government but from our Creator, that governments cannot exist without the consent ofthe governed — inspire still.And yet, more than a century of assaults by left-wing critics have bruised the founders, and the founding.In 1913, historian Charles Austin Beard began the onslaught with “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States,” arguing the founders were motivated not by a desire for freedom, but by economic greed.

Later generations added screeds about racism and misogyny.Historians issued a verdict that ours was not a real revolution — like the bloody one in France — merely a course correction.But any reading of the American Revolution’s ideological roots shows that the concept of self-governance was much discussed among all classes.

Edward Gibbon’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was a best-seller in America, promoting Enlightenment ideas of civic virtue.Rome’s ancient history became a roadmap for America’s ascendant future.If Gibbon’s work directly influenced the founders, Tom Paine’s Common Sense sparked the fire for revolution among a wider public.George Washington — named commander of the Continental Army even before the Declaration of Independence — had the book read to his troops.

Congress, weighing independence, devoured it.Even critics who cringed at Paine’s feverish language conceded its impact.At a time when many in Briti...