Today is Independence Day. We should spend more time calling it this than anything else. The “4th of July” is a mere marker of the day, but when one considers the concept of Independence Day one begins to realize we have a have a responsibility to keep our country and our people independent of the shackles of despots and government.

To be truly Independent is to be Dependent on yourself, not others, for your sustenance. Dependence on government is a shackle on the ankle of a free man. Thomas Jefferson, in the quote above on this blog, said later of the government he’d had a hand in creating,

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” -Thomas Jefferson in Letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824

They believed so much in freedom that they fought a war against the biggest military in the world to get it. But are we on the cusp of losing it? Each of our founders would find himself at the end of a noose if their plan had failed. As John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail on the 3rd of July in 1776:

I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

Our founders pledged their blood, treasure and sacred honor to give us a republic “if you can keep it.” (Benjamin Franklin)
 
We assume that people who are smart enough to get through school doing their own homework; we assume people who are smart enough to land a job; we assume people who are smart enough to work a cash register, we assume people who can decide for themselves what to eat; we assume people who can decide for themselves what clothes; we assume that people who are old enough to vote are capable enough to conduct the affairs of their own lives. We respect that and insist the government respect it as well.

On this Independence Day the people at Hillsdale College have provided a highly readable and helpful Declaration of Independence for you to share with your family. Here’s part of it. Find the rest here.

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 the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute 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 shown, 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.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.