When we talk about the American Revolution today, it’s difficult to look past the world that came out of it: a country with stubbornly persistent racism, widespread gun violence, rampant economic inequality, and deep political dysfunction. For those of us on the political left, it’s not easy to separate the insurrectionary project of Anglo-American colonists in the late eighteenth century from the injustices that plagued American society after the revolution, and those that have plagued it since.

Nor is the Right particularly bothered by this state of affairs. They’re happy saying the revolution was simply about resistance to “big government,” a legacy right-wingers purport to carry on today. But to project the political conflicts of today onto those of American patriots almost 250 years ago obscures not only the world they lived in but, more importantly, the world they were trying to create. To pretend that their aspirations began and ended with repealing taxes ignores much of what patriots had to say about their own revolution.

It also reinforces fatal misconceptions about the ideals those patriots were fighting for. The imperial crisis over taxation was the catalyst for a much wider struggle over unaccountable authority and the distribution of property — both relevant in fights over the meaning of American democracy today.