Happy Fourth of July
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What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and
jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were
soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They
had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told
nearly enough.
John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill
wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he
returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed.
He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home
to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall,
Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton. Nelson personally
urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the
headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.
But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea.
Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, 3 million square
miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree
that includes the bloodlines of all the world. In recent years, however, I’ve
come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation.
It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution
in all history.
Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But
those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a
revolution that changed the very concept of government.
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in
this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain
God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by
the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by
the people.
We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
Happy Fourth of July.”
~Ronald Reagan
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