A Libertarian Defense of the American Revolution

by: Joshua D Glawson, LPNC Strategic Communications Adviser

The American Revolution stands not only as a historical struggle for independence but as a profound expression of libertarian values. 

At its heart, the Revolution was not merely a war between colonies and empire, but a principled revolt against coercive authority, a moral act of self-defense by a free people whose natural rights had been repeatedly violated. 

From the standpoint of classical liberalism and modern libertarian philosophy, the American Revolution remains one of history’s clearest examples of justifiable political violence in response to systemic aggression.

The Moral Foundation: The Non-Aggression Principle and Natural Rights

Libertarianism actively embraces the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP; not to be confused with the Non-Initiation of Force - NIOF), which is the idea that it is never morally permissible to initiate aggression against another person or their property. 

However, when such aggression occurs, whether from an individual, a mob, a band of robbers, or a State, individuals have the right to defend themselves, including through force.

This moral stance echoes the political philosophy of the classical liberal John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government (1689) laid the intellectual foundation for the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the U.S. Constitution. 

John Locke argued that every person possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property, and that governments are formed by consent to protect those rights. If a government becomes destructive of those ends, Locke held, it enters a war with the people, and the people have a right to resist.

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people… they put themselves into a state of war with the people.”

John Locke’s philosophy is not an endorsement of rebellion for its own sake, but of legally justified resistance against power that becomes tyrannical. 

He wrote:

“The people shall be the judge.”

That principle, that the individual retains moral authority over the government, resonates directly with libertarian values.

The Libertarian Pledge

In fact, to join the Libertarian Party of the United States and the Libertarian Party of North Carolina, individuals must affirm the same core principle Locke defended, which is a rejection of coercive violence as a tool of politics:

“I certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.”

This is not pacifism. 

The Non-Aggression Principle permits the use of defensive force against aggression without outright glorifying aggression. 

By this standard, the American colonists, who were repeatedly denied representation, overtaxed, occupied, and stripped of basic legal protections, were not initiators of violence. Most of the colonists were, in fact, defenders of liberty, responding to decades of escalating arbitrary government aggression.

Jefferson’s Lockean Declaration

No document captures the spirit of Locke more than the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. 

Jefferson paraphrased Locke’s theory almost verbatim in the Declaration of Independence:

“That all men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights… That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

Jefferson's justification for revolution was not emotional or impulsive. It was philosophical, Lockean, legal, and moral. 

This natural law approach opposed the positive rights theory favored by the British and other statists, offering a valid argument for defending liberty against State aggression. 

Jefferson’s list of grievances in the Declaration, including taxation without representation, the quartering of troops, the obstruction of justice, and the use of military force to coerce civilians, reads like a checklist of Locke’s conditions for justified rebellion against the State.

Individual Sovereignty: The Moral Core of Revolution

At the heart of both natural law theory and libertarian philosophy is the belief that every individual is inherently sovereign. That sovereignty is not granted by the State, but by nature, or as Jefferson wrote, “by our Creator.” 

The State itself derives any legitimate authority and sovereignty from the individual, not the reverse.

The sovereignty of every individual is an absolute tenet of natural law. The sovereignty of the State is derived from the sovereignty of the individual. For a government to alienate the liberty of peaceful individuals is to effectively dissolve the legitimacy and sovereignty of such a government. 

Proper checks and balances are necessary and proper for upholding liberty and any remnants of governmental legitimacy and sovereignty.  

This natural law principle is echoed in Jefferson's immortal words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That phrase is not just poetic. It is a direct affirmation of Lockean natural rights and a radical declaration that the individual precedes the State in moral and legitimate authority. 

Governments exist only to protect those unalienable, also known as inalienable, rights that exist prior to the establishment of government or law (i.e., pre-legal rights). When governments and laws become instruments of coercion rather than protection, they cease to be legitimate.

This belief, that each person has moral agency and ownership over their own life,  is the bedrock of the libertarian view of both political resistance and civil society. 

The American Revolution was not an act of lawlessness. 

It was the exercise of sovereign individuals reclaiming their natural rights from a government that had become a violator, not a guardian, of liberty.

Rothbard and the Libertarian View of Revolution

In the 20th century, Murray Rothbard, a leading voice in the Austrian School of Economics and anarcho-capitalist libertarian traditions, hailed the American Revolution as “a radical libertarian movement” that struck the first major blow against Western imperialism.

“Inspired by libertarian ideals, the colonists increasingly forged a unity that was to result in the first successful national revolution against Western imperialism in the modern world.”

Rothbard viewed the Revolution not as a nationalist uprising but as a local assertion of voluntary self-governance in the face of coercive, centralized power. For the most part, the colonists, he argued, were morally right to resist the British State, just as any individual is justified in repelling any other aggressor.

Hayek: Warning Against Central Planning and the Loss of Liberty

Friedrich Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom (1944), warned that centralized planning inevitably leads to tyranny. While he did not write directly about the American Revolution, F.A. Hayek’s work reinforces its importance. The colonists opposed a British system increasingly defined by bureaucratic control, trade restrictions, and legal decrees from afar.

“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”

Hayek’s core insight, that liberty is incompatible with unchecked central authority, aligns with the colonists’ experience. 

British rule was not merely distant; it was arbitrary and unaccountable without any proper checks and balances. 

The American Revolution was a movement toward decentralization, toward a government closer to the people and bound by consent, legitimacy, and liberty.

Mises: Liberty and the Primacy of the Individual

Ludwig von Mises, the architect of the modern Austrian School of Economics and minarchist libertarianism, placed individual liberty at the center of civilization. 

In Mises’s view, history progresses only where individuals are free to act, trade, speak, and dissent. 

Mises rejected the idea that the State was the source of order. Instead, he believed that society flourishes only when coercion is minimized.

“Freedom is to be found only in the sphere in which government does not interfere. Liberty is always freedom from the government. It is the restriction of the government’s interference.”

Mises would have likely recognized the American Revolution as a pivotal moment when a people refused to be bound by despotism, when the principles of self-ownership, private property, and free association asserted themselves against the force of empire or State aggression.

Ayn Rand: A Moral Stand for Individual Rights

Though not necessarily aligned with political Libertarianism, Ayn Rand shared a deep admiration for the moral principles of the Revolution. 

As an Objectivist, laissez-faire capitalist, and classical liberal, Ayn Rand believed the United States was founded on the only political system ever rooted in man's rational right to his own life and liberty.

“The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness—which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders, by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.”

For Rand, the Revolution was a righteous assertion that no man is the property of another, and no government may rule without consent.

Political Violence and the Libertarian Standard

To be clear: libertarianism does not glorify violence or aggression. 

The use of force is always a last resort, justified only when peaceful remedies are exhausted and continued submission means the total loss of liberty. 

The American colonists petitioned, appealed, and resisted economically, but were ultimately met with force. Only then did they invoke their right to self-defense, as Locke had envisioned.

In the modern era, political violence is often abused or romanticized, especially by communists, socialists, fascists, and other Statists. 

However, the American Revolution offers a standard: violence becomes morally justifiable only when it is clearly defensive, when it responds to the systematic initiation of force by a ruling power or political elite.

As the Libertarian Party’s membership pledge suggests, force may never be used to achieve social or political goals, but there are legitimate justifications for some instances in which force may be used to resist those who try to impose or coerce them by force.

Conclusion: Liberty’s Just Rebellion

From the libertarian perspective, the American Revolution was not a coup d'etat or a blood-soaked grab for power for the common person. Instead, the American Revolution was a principled defense of the individual against institutional aggression. 

It was a moral and ethical assertion of the right to live free from coercion, rooted in natural rights and expressed through a radical commitment to self-government.

If we are to honor the legacy of the American Revolution, we must do more than celebrate its symbols on Independence Day (4th of July). We must understand its moral logic: that a just government must derive its power from consent, protect individual rights, and never initiate force. 

And when the government does the opposite, the right to resist is not rebellion, it is liberty’s final safeguard; it is America’s final safeguard.