Publisher’s note: This is the July 4, 2010, editorial from the Reno Gazette-Journal.

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…

There you have it. In this fragment of a sentence from the Declaration of Independence, written 230 years ago, is everything we, as a nation, believe in. It is the chain that binds tonight’s flashy festivities to our history. It is the reason we celebrate “‘ the reason that we can celebrate and the reason that we must celebrate.

It was a remarkable passage to be committed to paper by a group of men who unquestionably knew they were signing their own death warrants on July 4, 1776, as surely as they were planting the seeds of a new nation.

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