Editorial: Self-evident truths

Wednesday, July 4, 2007 | 1:03 a.m.

"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."

So begins the document declaring that the United States of America was a free and self-governing nation in which all people were to be equal and allowed to pursue their lives without interference from a monarchy.

To say this was a bold experiment doesn't do it justice. If the Declaration of Independence and its accompanying revolution had failed, those who had endorsed the document could have been guilty of treason under British law.

Much more than their lives were at stake. Liberty itself rode on the colonists' success in securing their freedom and freedom for future generations here and around the globe.

Certainly, the "unalienable rights" for which the Declaration of Independence called were not immediately extended to all who inhabited the U.S. colonies. Women, blacks and American Indians, among others, would long struggle to obtain the equality that had been guaranteed to white men from the start. In some ways, the United States still struggles to offer equality for all.

The right to question government is one reason why the 56 men who signed the declaration put their names - and their lives, liberty and country - on the line. It is a right to which people in other nations still aspire, and for which untold numbers still fight and die.

That those of us who live in the United States still so firmly possess such freedom is today, as it was in 1776, reason to celebrate.