On the Road: July 4th
July 2nd, 2010

On July 4, 1826 as the nation celebrated the 50^th anniversary of independence, two of America’s founding fathers took their long standing rivalry to their final day. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams passed away within hours of each other, each thinking his old rival had survived longer. While these two giants stood as rivals in life, and even in death, they shared a common bond in their determination that we carry forward this greatest experiment in human history; a nation founded and sustained by the belief that limited government serving a free people would lead humanity to build a greater world.

In 1820, Jefferson said, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

This weekend we celebrate the nation they created through powerful words and noble deeds. It can be easy to overlook and take for granted the freedoms America was founded on. With the current attitude in Washington that larger and more intrusive central government is the path to a better future, we are constantly reminded of the erosion of our freedoms and the danger that we can lose those liberties through inattention or inaction. As I wish you a happy and safe July 4^th, I hope that between the fireworks, barbecues, parades and picnics that we will all take a moment to consider our freedoms and the genius of the men who gave them voice.

On that July 4^th in 1826, John Adams had been invited to participate in a celebration of the 50^th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Failing health made him unable to attend and he sent his regrets with a warning that echoes all the way to the present day:

“My best wishes, in the joys, and festivities, and the solemn services of that day on which will be completed the fiftieth year from its birth, of the independence of the United States: a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race, destined in future history to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be shaped by the human mind.”

Posted by Robin Smith

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