The old man sat on a park bench. Slowly he ate his hot dog, oblivious to the whirl of festivities, music blaring, children playing, and parents struggling to keep track of their offspring.

“Yep another July 4th,” he laughed, sipping his drink.

A boy quietly approached his seat. “Grandpa!” he yelled.

The old man grinned, “Why hello, how are you?” Scooting to one side, he made room on his bench.

“Fine, what ya doing?” the boy asked.

“Oh, I’m just watching folks.”

“Do you know why we celebrate the 4th?” the boy asked stealing a bite from the hot dog.

“Yes I know, do you?” The old man wondered what his seven-year-old pride and joy and been taught.

Grinning ear to ear the boy fairly shouted, “It’s our county’s birthday!”

“Close enough,” The old man laughed.

 

For 241 years, Americans have celebrated July 4th with fireworks, parades, games, and parties. It is our oldest national holiday, but what exactly do we celebrate?

In a broad sense, it is our birthday, even though on July 4, 1776, we still had a lot of work to do – a war to win and a government to assemble. In fact, it was years before we wrote the Constitution that formed the government we know today.

More particularly, however, we celebrate the signing of our Declaration of Independence, probably the most influential document in western history. It was our formal act of treason against the King, that moment when we jumped the fence and left the “suds in the bucket and the clothes hangin’ out on the line” (Sara Evans).

Was it youthful rebellion? No, something more important happened 241 years ago. We upended centuries of established political thought.

 

“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.”

 

With that simple poetic statement, our founders declared that God gave us particular Rights that no one could revoke. We take this for granted today, yet in the 1700’s it was a novel concept. In the world occupied by our ancestors, only the Crown could grant and revoke rights. In their world, people lived at the whim of the King and his government.

 

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Bravely our founders also declared that Government got its power from the people. A simple concept, however, it is perhaps the most important, and most radical. In their world, the government got its power from the King, not from the people. After all, the common man existed only to serve the King.

Therefore, it is these two radical ideas that we celebrate:

•  Our Creator granted us certain rights that no one can take away, not even the government.
• The government gets its power from the people, and not the other way around.

Two simple concepts that changed the world.

 

 

David L Dahl.

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