The following is Part 1 of a feature on American history first published in EIR on February 9, 1996.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by what would soon become the United States of America. That instrumental document laid down the principles of an anti-oligarchic republican form of government, and would go on to be the inspiration for countless other peoples around the world, forever changing the shape of history. Today, this history is either misunderstood or intentionally misconstrued, and the U.S. has nearly abandoned the outlook of its Founding Fathers. Over the course of this year, EIR will be publishing key articles on the true anti-oligarchic history of the United States in the hopes of contributing to the widest possible discussion of these principles, the rediscovery of which has enormous implications for whether the world can get out of its current state of turmoil today.

This report continues the story begun in the Dec. 1, 1995 EIR, “The Anti-Newtonian Roots of the American Revolution.” That earlier segment demolished the myth that the American Revolution was inspired by “Enlightenment” British philosophy associated with Isaac Newton and John Locke. It showed, rather, that the British monarchy and its Empire were the principal enemies of the U.S.A. from colonial times to the Twentieth Century, due to a fundamental conflict over political and moral philosophy.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) and his circle carried on the war of ideas and statecraft that had been led by the German Platonic philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). These Americans, the heirs of Leibniz, opposed the imperialism, atheism, and irrationality of Britain, and of Locke and Newton, in politics and science alike. With Leibniz, they rejected Newton’s dead universe and Locke’s demand that property must dominate man. They made a Constitution and a government with the power to promote revolutionary technological change and improvement of man’s condition.