REFLECTIONS ON INDEPENDENDENCE DAY...

July 2007

I have lots of good Fourth of July memories as a baby boomer growing up in Atlantic City. At age eight, the town was so packed, my dad had to park the car four blocks from our house. At age ten, I sold the most newspapers on the beach. At age fifteen, I made the most change at the arcade. At age eighteen, I washed the most dishes and scooped the most ice cream, but still had time to meet the most girls on the beach and Boardwalk. At age twenty, I drove a cab, and was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in front of the Club Harlem at 4 AM. At age twenty eight, I met my wife at Little John's, a church converted to a nightclub at Tennessee and Pacific.

Like most Americans, I was so busy enjoying a good and comfortable life, that I never thought about the sacrifices others had made to make that life possible. Only now do I understand and appreciate what happened on July 4, 1776.

On that day 231 years ago, fifty six successful and comfortable business and professional men signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Five were from New Jersey. John Hart, age 63, was a wealthy farmer and mill owner in Hopewell. John Witherspoon, 53, was a Scottish scholar, who was invited to be president of Princeton University.

The other three were well known and successful lawyers, Abraham Clark, 51, of Essex County, Richard Stockton, 45 of Princeton, and Francis Hopkinson, 45, of Bordentown.

After a month of discussion and debate in Philadelphia, these fifty six men unanimously agreed that their thirteen English colonies in North America should be free and independent states, rather than part of England. They then signed a document to explain what they did. They declared that all men are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are instituted by us to secure those rights, and to exercise their just powers with the consent of the governed.

Those fifty six men knew that they enjoyed comfortable lives because they had liberty, and that if they allowed the English government to take away that liberty, their children and grandchildren would not have the same opportunities to succeed.

By signing the Declaration of Independence, each of those fifty six men became traitors to the British Empire. Under established English law, each of them and their male relatives (think "bill of attainder") were to be arrested and executed. All of the lands and other possessions belonging to them or their families were to be seized and turned over to the English government.

In most revolutions, people who have nothing risk death and prison to get a better life for themselves and their families. If they win, they control the government, and then take from others, as others had previously taken from them. But our American revolutionaries wanted nothing for themselves, but only "liberty and justice for all."

The signing of the Declaration of Independence brought seven years of brutal war, much of it fought in New Jersey. Thousands died. Thousands more were arrested and tortured. But they gave us a "new nation conceived in liberty." Four score and seven years later, in 1863, another generation of Americans fought and died to bring the principles of the Declaration of Independence to black Americans.

We older Americans today enjoy a good and comfortable life because of what past generations of Americans did for us. We should take some time to read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the speeches of Abraham Lincoln to better understand and appreciate what they did for us. You can find them at www.libertyandprosperity.org. Then we should spend less time thinking about what we think we are "entitled" to, and more time making sure our children and grandchildren enjoy the same blessings of liberty that we have.

For more information, visit www.libertyandprosperity.org or contact Somers Point attorney Seth Grossman at seth@dandy.net or 609-927-7333. Seth Grossman hosts a two way talk radio program on 1400AM Sundays Noon to 4PM and breakfast discussion groups every Tuesday at 8AM at Bayshores II Restaurant, 724 Bay Avenue in Somers Point.