Friends...The "Facts" indeed were submitted to a candid world, and the results were global, they were world shaking. The freedoms that our founders sought, and we have enjoyed are not to be taken lightly. They are to be guarded with the intensity with which they were earned. I spent 21 years of my adult life standing guard with my brothers in arms. I hold this day as a sacred holiday just as I held the freedoms and their protection as a sacred duty. I will be enjoying this incredible day of celebration with my two daughters Hannah and Annika. I wish to spend it as well with you all who read here, if not face to face then in the shared joy of LIBERTY. Such liberty that is not just the political liberty of a free nation, but that liberty that was bought with the price of the blood of our dear savior Jesus Christ. Go from this day with a determination to live in THAT liberty: "If Christ has made you free, you are FREE INDEED."
Galatians 5:1 "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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.
--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
