Today, Americans are getting together at parades, backyard barbecues and various other venues to celebrate the 4th of July. Truly appreciative people will celebrate the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world.

What sets us apart is what makes America great. I remember reading about how Hubert Humphrey was fond of mentioning that America was the only nation in the history of the world to list the pursuit of happiness as a national priority in its founding documents.

That’s just one of the priorities spelled out in our nation’s Declaration of Independence. It’s worth the time to examine the other priorities, too:

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.

The revolutionary nature of these principles often goes unnoticed. Before America’s Declaration, European countries said that power was given to the government, which then doled out limited amounts of power to that country’s citizens. The American Declaration that power started the citizens, who in turn gave limited amounts of that power to various governments, was as revolutionary as the declaration that the earth orbited the sun, not vice versa. It essentially stood conventional wisdom on its head.

Similarly revolutionary were the notions that all people were created equal, that the God of Nature gave them rights that couldn’t be denied, and that those rights included life, liberty of all types and the pursuit of happiness.

My first hope for you today is that you take some time to think about what a magnificent set of documents our Founding Fathers gave us. I’d submit that the greatest governing principles in the history of the world are contained in our founding documents.

My second hope for you today is that you think of whether we should take these founding documents at their word or if we should take them as simply guidelines that can be brushed aside for the ‘greater good’.

I submit that we should take the Declaration and the Constitution literally. I further submit that the only way we can stay true to our Founding Fathers’ ideals is to take these documents literally.

Technorati Tags: Declaration Of Independence, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Life, Liberty, Pursuit Of Happiness, Independence Day

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. [...] Original post by Gary Gross and software by Elliott Back [...]

   Pingback by Celebrating the Birth of a Great Nation at Conservative Times--Republican GOP news source. — July 4, 2007 @ 2:39 pm

1. And I submit to you, Gary, that, taken literally as written (and not simply as guidelines) the document does serve “the greater good.”

   Comment by Carlos — July 4, 2007 @ 3:28 pm