Join the new world

Long ago, the world was changed. Today is not the only day of that change, for it took years -- great battles were fought and great treaties were made. In a way each of the two hundred twenty-five years since that day has been its own unfolding of that change. But today is the day that is remembered, because today, a pledge that lasted centuries was forged.


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... a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Those who declared these words did not intend to change the world. They sought self-defense from a sovereign power which had let justice lie fallow and order be backed by steel. And yet all nations were moved by the trust that thereafter bloomed, when the people saw that government, as their own creation, must not forget those on whose behalf they ruled. The Americans wrought this change by defending a nation and by inspiring a continent. Perhaps it was inevitable that they would revolutionize the world.


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 yet these truths are not simple ink on paper. Every government today pays lip service to the sovereignty of the people over itself, and even the worst corrupters of this mandate -- the warlords of war-torn nations -- realize that their power is held only on sufferance, that without the loyalty of the people they had seized through fear, they would be nothing.


To the British, once countrymen, who would be the American Revolution's enemies, the Continental Congress had this to say:

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Today the phrase "New World Order," which American revolutionaries used to define their hope, has been used by others to signify a reign of the strong over the weak. Yet even in such an hour, we know the history that makes us strong.



Japan too earned its freedom through battle -- and proved that the price of freedom need not be separation from our history or traditions. After America's revolution rode wings of words throughout the world, others too would backing the self-evident truths with blood, gunpowder and steel. Japan too faced our Revolution with the Meiji Restoration, when the government of war met its natural end. Even remembering the perhaps more honorable age that was lost, we can only feel pride for the freedoms we have gained.


So today let us remember and celebrate our alliances, our friendships, and the strong and timeless principles of democracy for which our alliance's integrity stands.


This is Sophia Forrester for FNN, signing off.