Gratitude for--and on--July 4.

• Author: Emord, Jonathan W.
• Position: USA Yesterday

EACH JULY 4, we have a specific occasion to remember what it is that defines us as Americans. That memory--of a sovereign people whose government would depend on the consent of the governed and would guard against deprivation of their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property--long has been forgotten by many who live in the U.S. and, indeed, by those who hold elected office. Let us remember why it is that we celebrate Independence Day--set apart each year as requested by the Founding Fathers to reflect on what it is that truly defines us as Americans.

A recurrent fear of George Washington was that the fledgling republic--dedicated to the end that the people be free--would overcome constitutional constraints and supplant the people's liberties, but he well understood that danger to depend on the abandonment of principle by the people themselves. In 1783, he wrote: "The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period.... At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own." That most extraordinary of documents, the Declaration of Independence, brilliantly and succinctly defines the Lockean principles that are at the heart of the American republic and that reflect our core commitment to individual liberty and against government tyranny, making those principles the very definition of what it is to be an American.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: "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."

Against the mightiest military in the world at that time, a ragtag force numbering no more than 20,000 men achieved an end that only divine providence could assure: the defeat of that...