The Spirit of '76

Donald Trump is now describing himself as some type of new avatar for the Spirit of '76, Founding Father for the 21st century, a defender of liberty and freedom against tyranny.

Wyatt recalled a time when vendors were moving records by Ya Ho Wah 13, Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76 and other Family-related recordings for $20 or less because the Source had fallen out of fashion and the sellers “didn’t know what they had.”

During the war, for example, the producer of a film, “The Spirit of ’76,” was prosecuted under the act and sentenced to prison in 1918 because the government believed the movie undermined the British, a World War I ally, and was therefore seditious, said Mark S. Zaid, a national security lawyer.

This was precisely the neutral foreign policy that both Washington and Adams had been urging for a decade and that Jefferson had condemned as a betrayal of the spirit of ’76.

Jefferson would oversee and orchestrate this campaign and provide its rhetorical foundation, which enjoyed a privileged association with the spirit of ’76.