July 4th is the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. On that day in 1776, delegates from thirteen of Britain's North American colonies adopted a resolution “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states ... .” In time, these thirteen independent states would become one nation - the United States of America.
The task of drafting America's Declaration of Independence fell to a thirty-three-year-old Virginia planter named Thomas Jefferson. In clear and concise language, Jefferson stated the causes of the American revolution and the principles for which the new government stood: “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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Having established that legitimate government rests solely on the consent of free people, Jefferson asserted the right and the duty of all people to overthrow “absolute despotism” and establish governments that respect human rights.
The Declaration listed many abuses of basic human rights including making “the military independent and superior to the civil power,” abridgement of freedom of speech and press, denial of trial by jury and taxation and laws by a government in which Americans had no representation.
Jefferson wrote that Americans had exhausted every peaceful means of redress; that their petitions had been met only by more repression. Given a choice between revolution and submission to despotism, Americans chose to fight. The Declaration ended with these words: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
The fifty-six delegates from the 13 colonies who signed the Declaration on July 4, 1776, cast the first votes for independence. Their fellow citizens ratified the choice, and with it the then-radical, but now near universal principle that government should be based on the consent of the governed.
In January of this year, President Donald Trump proclaimed a National Day of Patriotic Devotion, “in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country, and to renew the duties of government to the people.”
President Trump pledged that “never again will America surrender her sovereignty, silence her people, apologize for her strength, or suppress the rights and God-given potential of her citizens.”
As America celebrates 250 years since our nation’s founding, President Trump noted “we stand renewed, resolute, and unafraid, carrying forward the same defiant spirit of July 4, 1776, that forged our Republic and will secure our future for generations to come.”