Will You Carry the Torch of Liberty?
July 4, 2024
by Pastor Dale Inman, State Republican Executive Committeeman (SREC SD-4) and Precinct 27 Chair
The United States of America is unique from all other nations. The notion of American Exceptionalism, first purported in 1831 by French historian and political scientist, Alexis de Tocqueville, remains engrained in the psyche of all liberty-loving patriotic Americans. The founding of The United States of America is one of the most significant undertakings of human achievement in the history of mankind.
Much of today’s world population live under the boot of despotism. Throughout recorded history, mankind has struggled through the darkness of tyrannical kings, murderous dictators, and malevolent monarchs. And while the ember of liberty glowed dimly in their hearts, there was limited oxygen to fan the flames of freedom into a roaring fire. Humanity was relegated to the dictates and whims of those who wielded the most power over them. History’s men and women carried the torch of liberty and continuously assailed the walls of servitude. They incrementally achieved greater and greater heights of freedom which we enjoy today.
Woodrow Wilson may have said it best:
“The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental Power, not the increase of it.”
There was a time in American history in which a group of dedicated and honorable men discussed freedom and penned their ideas onto parchment. They pledged their lives, their liberty, and their sacred honor for a set of ideas for which they were willing to die.
These ideas include:
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 affect their Safety and Happiness.
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.
This set of ideas is known worldwide as the United States Declaration of Independence, adopted by the 13 United States of America in Congress on July 4th, 1776. Let us live our lives in a manner worthy of the liberty for which these men died.
