Robert Chisholm

Today marks the 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. We refer to July 4th as Independence Day, but the signatures of the 56 men on that Declaration did not establish independence; it merely asserted it. There were many battles ahead. The American revolutionaries faced long odds: they fought against the world’s leading power while the vast majority of their fellow colonists were either opposed to independence or indifferent. And they had a lot to lose. All 56 signatories were prominent and successful in their respective colonies. They weren’t engaged in meaningless virtue signaling — the penalty for failure was death. When the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor in service to the cause, they meant it. They were waging an essentially conservative revolution to restore what they considered to be ancient rights. That they articulated a powerful rationale for their actions — namely, that rights come from God, not government and that the legitimacy of government comes, not from the dictates of a king, but from the consent of the governed — proved to have enormous consequences for the cause of liberty. In an age in which so much of politics is performative, we as Americans are lucky that the men who founded our country were willing to stand in the breach on a matter of great — and enduring — principle. They risked it all so that America could be free. Happy Independence Day!