CELEBRATE JULY FOURTH: LET FREEDOM RING

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 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, ...

It was 221 years ago that these magnificent words rang out off a parchment manuscript in Philadelphia, the work, largely of the incomparable Thomas Jefferson.

Although perhaps it is cast in less dramatic proportions, the struggle for liberty is one that continues today, the price of freedom truly, as the Founders knew, "eternal vigilance." Then as now, there were timorous politicians offering to trade the bracing air of freedom for a little temporary "safety" and government-guaranteed "security." Among the paragraphs in the heart of the Declaration, a lengthy "Bill of Indictment" against the tyrannical King of Great Britain, is this powerful sentence:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither a swarm of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Any 1990s small businessman or woman struggling to meet a payroll and scratch out a profit while dealing with the federal OSHA or the state DNR, the IRS or the EPA will recognize the challenge to freedom that bore down on our courageous colonial forebears. And so it is today, and always will be.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, ... appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the Name and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved, ...

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,

Bring on the celebrations.