If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom – go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
—Samuel Adams, in a speech delivered at the State House in Pennsylvania on August 1, 1776—
Key point: In 2019, America needs a renewed understanding of authentic liberty—what it means and what it requires. Americans also need a renewed appreciation for it—and how rare it is in the world. Liberty, you see, isn’t the norm, but the exception. Why? Because without the underpinnings of an understanding of right and wrong, absolute truth, and morality, liberty quickly deteriorates into chaos. The signers of the Declaration of Independence give us a model for securing and maintaining liberty, not just in the principles they upheld, but also in how they upheld them. We need to recapture the Spirit of ’76!
This article is presented against the backdrop of a series of articles titled “Principles of Liberty.”
As I have researched and written in recent days about the principles of liberty embedded in the Declaration of Independence, I have come to realize that the United States of America became free, strong, productive, and a force for good in the world not just because of the ideals that the Founding Fathers upheld in and through the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. It did so also because of the signers’ own commitment to the cause of liberty and their efforts to pass their priorities on to future generations. Our forebears…
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Copyright 2019 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations cited in this article are from the King James Version.
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