This may require some careful use of your powers of imagination and, maybe a dash or two of poetic or historical license. You will need to ignore today's geo-political realities, particularly the military power available to powers big and small in the early twenty-first century. You will also have to pretend that many political developments since our nation came into being either did not happen or did so in the context of this portion of North America continuing under the direct authority of the British Crown.

Then you will have to read the Declaration of Independence, not as a historical document or even an assignment for U.S. History I, but as if it is an Op-Ed article published by leading political figures on this side of the ocean, calling for our separation from the Crown and the establishment of independent, yet somewhat united, states.  Announcing that "these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved" these well known politicians and their wealthy supporters, believing that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation" have determined to explain the revolutionary course upon which they have embarked.

Now, ask yourselves which of today's political communities, simplified for this purpose to be the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh crowd and the rest of us, is the more likely to follow this self-styled "patriots" into battle against the established order. Is it Rush, Beck, Newt and Mr. Morning Republican who are likely to sign on to a view that since governments

their just powers from the consent of the governed ... whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 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

or, more probably, the likes of Keith Olbermann, Josh Marshall, Kos, and Frank Rich?

Which side in our current debates

has refused ... assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good

or sought, by increasing executive authority to undermine the people's

right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants [or] to render the military independent of and superior to civil power[?]

I do not intend to try to steal this day from those with whom we have political disgreements. Today is, after all, the Fourth of July, my favorite holiday as discussed ad nauseum in prior scribblings. But those opponents have struggled mightily over the years to suggest we are less partiotic, less willing to stand defend our nation and somehow less dedicated to what this country stands for, a position that is not only wrong, but, it seems to me, very wrong.

Though perhaps our founders did not mean this the same way as do today, the fact is that it is an essential component of our compact with our national government to accept the declaration published in Philadelphia 223 years ago that, (as edited for today)

all men [and women] 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

even if one does not believe in a divine source of these rights but that are an "unalienable" right of every human being. Government is not intended to regulate any further than necessary every person's exercise of those fundamental rights and to impose anyone's religious or political beliefs on anyone.

I believe that, as I am sure do most who post on TPM or Daily Kos and, at least for the moment, a majority of our fellow citizens. Today would be good day for those who question the mission of our founders, pledging to one another their "lives, ... fortunes and ... sacred honor," to perhaps reconsider their positions including that which abjures collective action for the benefit of all.

What began this day so many years ago, has been refined through the years to bind us as a people even closer together. As one of our greatest presidents put it:

Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

..

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike...

[G]overnment in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

For more than three years we have fought for them. This convention, in every word and deed, has pledged that the fight will go on.

The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our government and of ourselves. Never since the early days of the New England town meeting have the affairs of government been so widely discussed and so clearly appreciated. It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle.

Have a stupendous Fourth!!