This editorial first appeared in the Daily News 10 years ago on July 4th.

If the United States is, as British author G.K. Chesterton put it in 1922, a nation with the soul of a church, then Independence Day is the highest of our high holy days. We celebrate today not only the first step a bloody war would follow on Americas road to independence, but also the enduring ideas on which our country was founded.

If America itself is a kind of religion, then its creed is to be found in the Declaration of Independence. It is a celebration of liberty, of the unalienable rights of individual people, a declaration that the highest calling of government is to secure these rights.

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.

These words, whose elegance can be attributed largely to Thomas Jefferson, still have the capacity to inspire us, whether our roots in America are generations deep or date to last week. As Americans, we believe in freedom and independence. That belief, rather than ethnic commonality, generations on the same piece of soil or tribal loyalties, is what binds us together.

Do some Americans mean different things when they talk about freedom and liberty? Do politicians and blackguards exploit the terms, sometimes to promote a different agenda, sometimes to subvert liberty itself? Do Americans themselves sometimes exhibit confusion or partial understanding of what liberty means or should mean?

Yes to all. It took more than 80 years for slavery, a glaring contradiction of all the noble sentiments in the Declaration, to be abolished in the United States. Freedom has been invoked to sustain wars of aggression as well as wars of defense. Both friends and foes of freedom sometimes confuse liberty with license rather than responsibility.

Yet this land remains a magnet for people all over the world who dream of living in liberty and achieving prosperity not because of who they are but because of what they do. Despite the best or worst efforts of politicians and demagogues, liberty yet lives and holds out the promise of a better life to those who will accept the responsibilities that come with it.

As long as that sense of discovery and anticipation remains a part of our culture, and as long as we understand that liberty is a journey and not a final state, liberty will not die in this country.

Excerpt from:

EDITORIAL: Liberty is a long journey for Americans - The Northwest Florida Daily News