We have cause to celebrate the 4th

The Fourth of July is all about baseball and barbecues, patriotic marches and flashing fireworks that will light up the night sky. It's how we Americans commemorate the signing of our Declaration of Independence, the birth of our nation and what we proudly call "the American way of life."

At a time when the world is changing in so many ways, it's important to step back and find assurance in the time-honored principles that have been the bedrock of America's greatness and ask how this document of independence in all its fullness would be interrupted today.

We were founded on and have been sustained through the understanding that liberty is at the heart of the American experience - that this nation would put into practice the belief that freedom is a gift from the Creator and that proper stewardship of the free life carries with it responsibility in how we lead our lives and serve one another.

As the signers of the Declaration of Independence understood, freedom was not without sacrifice. Some were captured by British troops as traitors, others lost homes, property and sons in the fight for independence, and many endured hardship, physical and financial, simply by standing firm for the cause of freedom.

As we fire up the grill this weekend and inventory our supplies of fireworks, let's not forget that we are embroiled in still another conflict that threatens us here at home - the war against the terrorism, regardless of what we call it these days - that brought our nation to a halt, if only briefly, on Sept. 11, 2001.

And remember, too, that while we celebrate here at home, thousands of our  young men and women remain in Iraq and Afghanistan seeking to bring the American dream, so hard won in our own history, to other nations.

Consider the opening sentences of the Declaration and discover the message that is as fresh today as it was 233 years ago - that freedom cannot be taken for granted.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"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 ..."

Remember all this, but also remember that despite the wars, despite the terror, it is fitting that we celebrate. After all, our form of government and our way of life have passed the test of time, surviving and emerging stronger each time from a civil war, two world wars and several other conflicts in faraway places.