Happy Independence Day

Today we celebrate tomorrow’s commemoration of the birth of a nation of opportunity

The sweltering incubator of Philadelphia in 1776 brought forth, as Abraham Lincoln declared “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He continued “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” In a sense, we still test whether that nation can endure.

Celebrate the Glorious Words

Our hearts should soar as we contemplate the lofty ideals they made into reality:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“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.

• 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, and to institute new Government.
• Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes
• When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
• Such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

Let us rejoice at the dedication of those who built a nation on those principles. Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, and others show us, today, how difficult it is to accomplish the same goals.