America Is Worth Celebrating | Opinion

July 4 is a big day as Americans will soon celebrate our nation's 247th birthday, honoring the document signed in 1776 that changed world history: the Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, ever-increasing numbers of Americans don't seem to care or know about the historical significance of the date; many won't fly the American flag to honor the date. One neighbor of mine—you have neighbors like them—has flown, in just the past six months, the Ukrainian flag, the pride flag, and the flag of our local school system. But come July 4, the American flag won't be flying. They've never once flown it—for reasons they may or may not know. My guess is it embarrasses them to publicly exhibit that kind of pride in country.

It's tragic, because there's so much to love about America and our flag. And much to honor. Though not perfect men, our Founders unleashed a revolution of human freedom that summer day in 1776 in Philadelphia. "Every single one had his flaws, his failings, his weaknesses," the late historian David McCullough said at a Hillsdale College event in 2005 about the men who signed the Declaration. "But the fact that they could rise to the occasion as they did, these imperfect human beings, and do what they did is also, of course, a testimony to their humanity."

It was also a testimony to their courage. A "pensive and awful silence...pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants," Benjamin Rush, one of the 56 signers, recalled. Rush was right. Parliament considered the Declaration of Independence a treasonous document. And treason was a capital crime.

Though the legacy of our Founders has of late come under repeated attacks by woke ideologues, American leaders across party lines—and centuries—have expressed reverence for what they did that summer in 1776. These were President Abraham Lincoln's words about those men—and the document they signed—in a speech at Independence Hall in 1861:

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live.... All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

On July 5, 1926, the day of America's 150th birthday, President Calvin Coolidge said these words about our nation's birth certificate:

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

On July 4, 1962, President John F. Kennedy had this to say at Independence Hall in Philadelphia:

The theory of independence is as old as man himself, and it was not invented in this hall. But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice; that the word went out to all, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, that "the God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time."

On July 4, 1965, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. dedicated part of his sermon at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta to the Declaration. Unlike progressive activists of today, King didn't attack Jefferson's very obvious human failings.

He instead began by quoting Jefferson's famous words that have echoed through time: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

King then began to preach:

It's a great dream. The first saying we notice in this dream is an amazing universalism. It doesn't say "some men"; it says "all men." It doesn't say "all white men"; it says "all men," which includes black men. It does not say "all Gentiles"; it says "all men," which includes Jews. It doesn't say "all Protestants"; it says "all men," which includes Catholics. It doesn't even say "all theists and believers"; it says "all men," which includes humanists and agnostics.

King wasn't finished.

Never before in the history of the world has a sociopolitical document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language the dignity and the worth of human personality. The American dream reminds us—and we should think about it anew on this Independence Day—that every man is an heir of the legacy of dignity and worth.

Few historians tell the story of those men—and that time—better than Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn.  Fewer still express better than Arnn why it's important to teach our nation's youth how to think about events of the past. "To present young people with a full and honest account of our nation's history is to invest them with the spirit of freedom," he said in a 2020 speech. He continued:

It is to teach them something more than why our country deserves their love, although that is a good in itself. It is to teach them that the people in the past, even the great ones, were human and had to struggle. And by teaching them that, we prepare them to struggle with the problems and evils in and around them. Teaching them instead that the past was simply wicked and that now they are able to see so perfectly the right, we do them a disservice and fit them to be slavish, incapable of developing sympathy for others or undergoing trials on their own. Depriving the young of the spirit of freedom will deprive us all of our country. It could deprive us, finally, of our humanity itself.

Arnn's words are worth sharing, as are those of King, Kennedy, Coolidge, Lincoln—and the Declaration itself. For anyone who loves this country, it's also worth dusting off your American flag—or buying a new one—and flying it proudly on our nation's 247th birthday.

The Declaration of Independence is worthy of such a gesture.

Lee Habeeb is vice president of content for Salem Radio Network and host of Our American Stories. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, Valerie, and his daughter, Reagan.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.