My Belated Happy 4th of July Post

OK, I was bad. I completely, though not intentionally, overlooked posting anything for the July 4th Independence Day recognition. Shame on me. So for the sake of time and just because I like this article, I am posting the following:

The Real Meaning of July 4

July 2, 2009 | By Nathaniel Ward

What is the Fourth of July? Just a convenient summer holiday with barbecues and fireworks? Or is there a deeper meaning?

"The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called "the declaratory charter of our rights," writes Heritage scholar Matthew Spalding.

Chiefly the work of Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was America's proclamation to the world "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." And it held that the purpose of government is to "secure these rights," rather than to determine what rights the people could enjoy.

The Declaration of Independence marks our nation's conception of liberty. Its truths, grounded in a higher law and applied to all men, are "self-evident." President Abraham Lincoln once praised the document as an "abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times."

"What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances," writes Spalding. "But that they did so by appealing to -- and promising to base their particular government on -- a universal standard of justice."

This universal standard of justice endures for all time and cannot be reversed or rewritten. In a speech marking the 150th anniversary of independence on July 5, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge elaborated this point:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If govern­ments derive their just powers from the con­sent of the governed, that is final.

His next point is a direct rebuke to the so-called "Progressives" -- those on the Left who believe their views are the next step in historical "progress":

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propo­sitions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress."