- July 15, 2025
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For the past 25 years, before or on the Fourth of July, we have devoted this page to serving as a reminder of our Founding Fathers’ courageous act of declaring the nation’s independence and articulating the principles that compelled them to do so.
One theme dominated these essays: We must constantly remind ourselves to stay committed to Jefferson’s immortal words: “ … That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Here are passages from those 25 years that we hope will keep you committed to fighting for liberty:
The American colonists called it the Glorious Cause.
They never should have won.
They were mostly farmers, little more than a militia of rag-tag misfits, challenging the most powerful military in the known world. And they were young. George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, was 43; John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, was 39; John Adams was 40; Thomas Jefferson, 32. And Thomas Paine, the journalist who rallied all of America with his pen, was 37.
That they succeeded against the overwhelming odds was a miracle, a work of Providence, the result of indomitable passion for the Cause.
It is a story to hold in awe, the perpetual emblem of what we have today — freedom.
The Spirit of America — a relentless burning for Freedom — became etched in our nation’s collective psyche and culture when Thomas Jefferson penned the indelible words that: “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.”
On the occasion of Japan’s surrender in World War II, Sept. 2, 1945, President Harry Truman told the nation:
“We now know that that spirit of liberty, the freedom of the individual and the personal dignity of man are the strongest and toughest and most enduring forces in the world.
“Those principles provide the faith, the hope and the opportunity which help men to improve themselves and their lot.
“Liberty does not make all men perfect nor all society secure. But it has provided more solid progress and happiness and decency for more people than any other philosophy of government in history. And this day has shown again that it provides the greatest strength and the greatest power which man has ever reached.”
Thomas Paine’s words still reverberate today. While they can bring to mind the images of the incredible struggles our forebearers endured to establish this free, independent nation 234 years ago, Paine’s writing is as relevant to our nation’s struggles today as it was then.
These indeed are times that try men’s souls in America. Yes, of course, there are big differences between now and then. Our present-day government isn’t murdering American citizens, or ransacking, looting and burning our homes and confiscating our property as the king’s soldiers did in the 1770s. But few Americans now would deny that our federal government today has taken on similarly tyrannical qualities and parallels, though without the violence. …
This makes Paine’s “Common Sense” an allegory for us, a reminder, as he put it, “not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers … ”
He was not just against the king and British rule; Paine argued for independence and freedom. And in so doing, he planted a seed that grew into the Spirit of America. Called Paine:
“O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”
So here is a short shot of historical truths to inoculate from the fatal venom of forgetting how we got here.
America did not just happen; its wealth has not always been; and there is no guarantee that it always will be.
Jefferson’s words never rang truer: “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”
That is America, the bright city on a hill, the beacon of liberty the world over.
Let us not allow ignorance to put out that lamp. Without a free and prosperous shining America, the world will be a much, much darker place.
Our ancestors — from the Revolutionary War to the Greatest Generation — endowed us with the obligation that we must never forget. The Spirit of America is the Spirit of Liberty. It’s not free. We must protect it and spread it, especially among our own.
Jefferson penned in that room not only the summary of preceding decades of events and relations with the Motherland and its King, but he crystallized what became the fundamental premise of American life, then and thereafter: We have the right to create our own destiny.
So it is. On the eve of the day 56 members of the Second Continental Congress ratified and signed the Declaration of Independence — pledging to each other their lives, fortunes and sacred honor; and declaring liberty and renouncing tyranny — on the eve of the day Americans will celebrate the 241st anniversary of the birth of what has become the greatest democratic republic in history, we are ripped apart. A strongly woven garment ripped jaggedly at the seams, with the perpetrators standing opposite one another gripping serrated knives.
This is not right. We should be feeling patriotic. We should be feeling proud to be an American, proud of the values we have pursued and cherished for two and a half centuries … As a friend said recently: “To be an American is to win the lottery of life.”
John Adams warned future generations: “Posterity: You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, the 25,000 who died, the other 54 who signed the Declaration of Independence and the thousands of other Colonists who fought and helped out did so for their independence, freedom from tyranny and their unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
How refreshing it would be to hear those who seek national public office today remember the struggles of our nation’s founding and pledge, as the Founding Fathers did, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in support of the Cause: Liberty.
If they won’t, we must.
(T)his year’s edition of Spirit of America celebrates those among us who rose up in a time of crisis — the COVID-19 pandemic — to lift others’ spirits and serve others in need. The stories and photographs remind us of that quintessential generosity, determination and can-do spirit that has been a hallmark of the people who make up the extraordinary tapestry of this great nation.
What’s more, this year’s Spirit of America stories should give us hope, especially when so many of us are worried as never before about what is next and what is to come of the future of our Republic …
On this awkward Fourth of July — with the COVID-19 pandemic subduing our Independence Day celebrations — we hope the holiday nevertheless marks a turning point — a time when the Silent Majority, the vast majority of law-abiding America-loving patriots begins to reassert its voice.
We hope it’s a unified voice that asserts a decisive call for the defense of our nation’s founding principles; a just enforcement of the rule of law; and a forceful repudiation of life-destroying Marxism, socialism and anarchy.
We hope the Silent Majority, starting this Fourth of July, begins to end its silence and, like our Founding Fathers, recommits to the immortal declaration to everyone’s peaceful unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
On this July 4, let the Spirit of America rise up once more.
How do we pursue happiness?
At the root of that pursuit is the human yearning to be free; to be individuals; to be free to make our own choices, choices in our self-interest and the interests of others; and not to be under the yoke of some tyrannical power who makes us slaves.
Far, far too few Americans seem to appreciate — indeed, revere — all of that. Nor do they appreciate how extraordinary were the Declaration of Independence and the aura around it; or how precious it still is; and how precious it is to their lives today.
Come Monday, July 4, this is the day Americans want to be happy, the day we want to feel good about the U-S-A.
It is the one day every year we want to celebrate and be thankful to our founding ancestors for two of the most extraordinary human concepts that took root in this land and flourished over the next 244 years: independence and freedom.
When President Calvin Coolidge concluded his 1926 Fourth of July address, Coolidge told his fellow Americans:
“If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism.
“We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.”
As you wave your flag or fire up your grill on the Fourth of July, we’ll encourage you as we did in 2021:
Wave that flag hard. Be resilient, as resilient as the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and as courageous as the Founding Fathers who pledged their lives, their fortunes and honor with their signatures on the Declaration of Independence.
Continue to believe in the magnificent principles that all men are indeed created equal and stand strong for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Happy Independence Day.
