Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has doubled down on the absurd, now claiming in a viral clip that the American Revolution was not a fight for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but rather a revolt against the billionaires of the Founding Fathers’ era: Great Britain.
"The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time."
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 10, 2026
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tripled down on her criticism of the wealthy after recently arguing that billionaires didn't "earn" their fortunes. pic.twitter.com/fjtEJGbzn9
"America was founded, look at Thomas Jefferson writing to Madison, in revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time and we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state that the voices of everyday people did not exist," the self-proclaimed democratic socialsits said.
Beyond the shallow comparison that the British Empire was vastly wealthier than the 13 colonies at the time of the Revolution, any student of history, or even a high schooler, for that matter, would know the war was fought in pursuit of political liberty, not “freedom from want” as AOC frames it.
Ironically, even many of America’s founders themselves were considered aristocracy within the colonies.
The founders did not fight for the “freedom” to tax the rich, or the “freedom” to provide government-subsidized housing and healthcare, or the “freedom” to impose sweeping environmental regulations. Nothing close to that was driving the Revolution.
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They fought for the freedom of individuals to pursue their own happiness, economic or otherwise, without interference from government or from their fellow man. It was about the freedom to pursue success as one sees fit, not as dictated by the state.
AOC would want none of that. She and the rest of the progressive left would rather impose their own version of “happiness” on the public in the name of the collective good. Notice that this requires force, not freedom. She would have some Americans subsidize others in the name of liberty, a complete bastardization of the term itself.
The American Revolution was not so shallow that it amounted to a simple demand for wealth redistribution or a reaction to material inequality alone. It was something far more noble: a fight for self-governance, individual liberty, and freedom from centralized control, things AOC knows very little about.
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