The Fourth of July

Light up the barbecue in the back yard. Fill the cooler with beer and spend the afternoon emptying it. Cover your hot dog with ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, maybe even sauerkraut. Find a good place to watch the fireworks, or maybe even set off a few of your own.

And all the while, remember that you are doing this because a two hundred and thirty-one years ago today, a group of men were gathered in Philadelphia to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause ending the rule of the greedy villains who were using the powers of government to rob them blind. The King was deaf to their protests and in fact was quite mad. Parliament would not act, but was in fact part of the problem. And so these men saw no other choice before them but to band together to refuse and resist the tyranny.

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.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But 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, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.