We thank?Rich Maxwell,?Ike Rucker, and other event organizers for including www.libertyandprosperity.org in this remarkably inspiring and well organized parade and ceremony.
Instead of marching in the parade this year, nine ?Liberty and Prosperity ?volunteers handed out these postcards along the parade route.? They explain?why ?July 4 is so important.?
July 4, 1776 was when our nation was ?conceived in liberty?.?? That was when our Declaration of Independence held these truths to be ?self-evident?:
We are all created equal.?? We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.?? Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.?? To secure the rights, governments are instituted among us, exercising their just powers with the consent of the governed.
America is not perfect.?? But when we understood and respected our Constitution and founding principles of liberty, America brought more wealth, opportunity, and justice to more people than any other? nation in history.? That is the meaning of ?Liberty and Prosperity? the motto New Jersey adopted one month later in August of 1776.??
At the end of the parade, I was asked to speak briefly at the ceremony.?? I described ?the speech Abraham Lincoln gave in February of 1861, when he was travelling from his home in Illinois to be sworn in as President in Washington, D.C.? ??At that time, four states had quit the union, and many people thought our country was falling apart.
When his train passed through Philadelphia,? Abraham Lincoln stopped briefly to visit Independence Hall.?? Before getting back on the train, Lincoln made these remarks by the flagpole in front of Independence Hall:??
?I ?never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.? . .? I often inquired what great principle or idea it was that kept this collection of states together so long.?? It was not the mere separation of the Colonies from the motherland.?? But it was the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence that gave liberty?not alone to the people of this country–, but I hope, to the world, for all future time.? It was that which gave promise that in due time, the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.?? This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.??? Abraham Lincoln, February 22, 1861?
Submitted by Seth Grossman, Executive Director
P.S.? We have several hundred of these postcards left over.?? Please contact us at info@libertyandprosperity.org if you would like to distribute some on your own.?? Thanks.