In 1776, a band of colonists declared a truth that altered the trajectory of human history: when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to throw it off and provide new guards for their future security. We celebrate this principle every Fourth of July. We teach it to our children as the bedrock of civic virtue. We have carved it into the very stone of our national monuments. Yet today, as the Iranian people rise against a theocracy that has murdered, tortured, and terrorized them for nearly half a century, the international community—and too often our own leadership—hesitates to affirm the very right we hold sacred. This contradiction does more than stall diplomacy; it diminishes our own moral standing.

I do not say this as a partisan, but as an American who believes our founding principles are not merely historical artifacts to be admired under glass. They are living, universal truths that apply with equal force to a farmer in Virginia in 1776 and a student in Tehran in 2026. To suggest that the right to revolution is an American "privilege" rather than a universal human "right" is a form of cultural exceptionalism that betrays the very spirit of the Declaration of Independence.

The Iranian people are currently providing the world with a masterclass in courage. For over two weeks, a relentless wave of protests has swept........

© Townhall