Celebrate The Declaration of Independence

We humbly suggest that part of every American family’s Independence Day celebration should be rereading and reflecting on the great truths of The Declaration of Independence, the document that inspired creation of this website. The full text is here.

This revolutionary document established as “self-evident truth” that we are all created equal and that our rights come directly from God, our creator. The only legitimate purpose of government is to protect, not to dispense or withhold those preexisting, God-endowed rights.

Ronald Reagan’s Second Inaugural Address included this Astounding bit of history:

Two of our Founding Fathers, a Boston lawyer named Adams and a Virginia planter named Jefferson, members of that remarkable group who met in Independence Hall and dared to think they could start the world over again, left us an important lesson.

They had become political rivals in the Presidential election of 1800. Then years later, when both were retired, and age had softened their anger, they began to speak to each other again through letters. A bond was reestablished between those two who had helped create this government of ours.

In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they both died. They died on the same day, within a few hours of each other, and that day was the Fourth of July.

In one of those letters exchanged in the sunset of their lives, Jefferson wrote: “It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing harmless … we rode through the storm with heart and hand.”