As Americans prepare to celebrate the anniversary of the adoption of our Declaration of Independence, it is important to take a hard look at why it is worth celebrating, nearly 250 years later.

After all, the date has been a federal holiday only since 1870 — the heart of the Reconstruction Era, when lawmakers saw the value in finding ways in which Americans could be united in their celebration. But since the beginning, there have been certain truths worth fighting for here — foremost among them that ALL men are created equal. In that equality they are endowed “by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, … among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

All men.

Further, the founders knew, way back then, that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Unable any longer to endure the “long train of abuses and usurpations” of “absolute Despotism,” however, those founders knew it was time to take a radical step and to throw off the “absolute Tyranny over these States,” and fight to form the country in which we live today.

Everyone preparing to celebrate Independence Day should take just a few minutes to read the Declaration of Independence — all the way to the end — and remember why we are so proud to celebrate the victory the authors of that document eventually accomplished.

Remember that in throwing off the bonds of “a Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, … unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” John Adams believed Americans would want to celebrate with “pomp and parade” including festivals and fireworks.

Do that (safely and responsibly), then. Do it with a determination to live up to the bold cause to which the founders mutually pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. And do it with a real understanding of WHY we celebrate on the Fourth of July in this land of the free and home of the brave.

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“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“Independence Day: Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower