I was around for the bicentennial in 1976, but I wasn’t old enough to remember any of it.
It sure seems like there was an outpouring of patriotism on display back then, one that appears to be missing as we get closer to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I know a lot of folks on the left will blame that on Donald Trump being in the White House, but if that’s why they’re no interested in celebrating I’d say that’s awfully shortsighted. Keep in mind that in 1976 we were just two years removed from Watergate. We had a president who not only never ran for that position, he wasn’t even a vice-presidential candidate. And just a couple of years after that, the president would publicly complain about a national “malaise.” It’s not like the 70s were all sunshine and roses, but the nation still managed to get into the spirit of ’76.
Matt Walsh thinks part of the problem with our own lack of patriotic fervor is a dearth of entertainment options that celebrate the American experience and the individuals who’ve helped make this country great.
One of the big reasons for the current lack of patriotism and pride in our nation’s history is that about 40 years ago our most prominent storytellers in Hollywood just basically stopped telling stories about American history altogether, unless it has something to do with WW2,…
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 1, 2026
I generally disagree with Walsh at least as much as I agree with him, but I think he’s probably on to something here. Sure, you can still find plenty of books that tell these stories, but fewer and fewer Americans are reading, and history books aren’t generally as popular as fiction written for a mass audience, so many of us will never learn these tales.
The right to keep and bear arms has been an indelible part of our American tradition since well before the Founding, and there are many stories of individuals exercising their Second Amendment rights that would translate well to the big screen. The 2009 biopic of Harriet Tubman turned a profit at the box office, but that’s one of the last historical films I can recall where armed citizens were instrumental to the storyline.
There are other tales from that same time period that I believe would be just as compelling to watch on the big screen, or even at home. The saga of Bleeding Kansas could make for an incredible series on a streaming service, with abolitionist John Brown serving as a complicated anti-hero at the heart of an epic detailing both the political battles and small-scale warfare between abolitionists and slave owners fighting over who would control Kansas and whether slavery would be allowed when it became a state.
At the same time pro-and-anti-slavery forces were fighting over Kansas, other Americans were taking up arms and defying the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which required citizens to aid in the recovery and return of slaves who managed to flee their captivity. The Christiana Resistance in 1851, where armed citizens in the small Pennsylvania town fought back and killed one slave owner intent on recapturing his property, would make for a great period drama encompassing the fight itself and the legal aftermath, where more than a dozen townspeople were charged with treason for supposedly waging war on the United States.
Earlier this year my colleague Tom Knighton wrote about the Battle of Athens, where recent WWII veterans took on a corrupt local government; first using the ballot box, but then using the cartridge box to defend their liberties and fair elections. To cover the events in detail would take longer than a two-hour movie, but this too would be a great topic for a limited series on a streaming service.
The Stamp Act riots in Philadelphia, on the other hand, could easily be told within one movie. With Benjamin Franklin’s wife Deborah in the starring role, the film could explore the animosity that greeted the Stamp Act and its proponents… and even those who were assumed to support it, like Benjamin Franklin himself. At the time, Franklin was serving as Pennsylvania’s agent in London, and when an armed mob descended on his home ready to tear it down (and perhaps do violence to those inside), it was Deborah who grabbed a gun and, with the help of family and friends, successfully defended her domicile from the violent crowd outside the walls.
I have no idea if any of these stories ever be turned into a Hollywood production, but I know I’ll watch them if they are. And if we’re looking to history to rekindle our collective love of country, there’s a lot of material to work with by examining the role that the right to keep and bear arms has played in advancing and protecting liberty and freedom over the past 250 years.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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