INDEPENDENCE DAY: The Story of Us | Eastern North Carolina Now

    By a stroke of remarkable coincidence, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day - the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826. Jefferson preceded Adams in death by five hours.

    When I think about Independence Day, I think of our magnificent story. I think about the uncompromising determination of people to live free and the eternal vigilance it took to finally secure lasting boundaries on government. I think about the ways the British and then the colonists expressed their discontent with the King and the many ways they sought to exert their rights, and how the many efforts culminated in their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence. I think about how our Founding Fathers brilliantly turned government on its head - transforming a system of government based on the Divine Right of Kings to a system predicated on Individual Sovereignty. I think of a continuum of a story that began in 1215 with a stand-off on the meadow at Runnymede in order to secure a promise from an arrogant and ambitious king that ended with a document signed by 56 delegates assembled together from 13 separate states on July 4. The continent may have changed, but man's yearning to be free did not.


    Now, as we all know, a country is a physical location inhabited by a body politic. Principles are embraced by people and not by geography, and so liberty and independence is a spirit that must live in all of us. If it doesn't, then we suffer oppression together. As Machiavelli once said: "It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free." The Declaration embraces our revolutionary spirit, and God help us when our country has the spirit of an aging grandmother. The key is to always keep that revolutionary spirit. And maybe that's what Independence Day is all about.... to reflect on our history and to rekindle that spirit every year.

    In conclusion, I would like to implore that on this Independence Day and on every Independence Day, that we remember the advice that was once given to us by James Madison: "The people of the U.S. owe their Independence and their liberty to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings."


    References:

    Brion McClanahan, "Rethinking the Declaration of Independence," Abbeville Institute, July 4, 2016. Referenced at: http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/rethinking-the-declaration-of-independence/

    Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr. (Professor of Political Science), "The American System of Government: The American Constitutional System - English Origins (1066-1558)," Cyberland University of North Carolina. Referenced at: http://www.proconservative.net/CUNAPolSci201PartFourB.shtml [In-depth study of the Magna Carta]

    The Petition of Right of 1628 - http://study.com/academy/lesson/petition-of-right-of-1628-definition-summary.html

    The English Bill of Rights of 1689 - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp

    The Grand Remonstrance - http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur043.htm

    The Declaration and Resolves - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp

    Patrick Henry's Speech of March 23, 1775 - https://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm

    Halifax Resolves - http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-revolution/4328

    Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention of May 15, 1776 - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/const02.asp

    The Lee Resolutions - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/lee.asp

    "Boiling It Down, This Is What You've Said," Mark America, October 15, 2011. Referenced at: http://markamerica.com/2011/10/15/boiling-it-down-this-is-what-youve-said/

    Winston Churchill, "The Sinews of Peace", address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (March 5, 1946); in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963 (1974), vol. 7, p. 7288.

    Calvin Coolidge, speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (July 5, 1926