Opinion: This 4th of July, let’s celebrate Americans’ shared ideals

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As the July 4th holiday approaches, I begin to recall from the 1950s the thrill of watching the parades march straight through downtown Duluth. Especially seeing Albert Woolson, the last survivor of the Union Army. The presence of a real Civil War soldier brought the tales of American history to life.

Those parades sparked my conviction that Independence Day is America’s most important holiday. We are not the typical nation bound together by ethnicity, religion, language or ancient history. Our cement is a shared commitment to the self-evident truths proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence: That we are all created equal. That our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable. That we are entitled to throw off an oppressive regime. Don’t tread on us.

We are in a tough spot this year, and we are spending plenty of time spotlighting our divisions. But this holiday is the day we need to celebrate our cement.

The founding of a nation based on these revolutionary principles changed the course of history. A handful of political organizations — ancient Athens, the Swiss Confederacy founded in 1291, the Iroquois Confederacy that predated European contact — had developed participatory decisionmaking. But no sovereign state had created a government whose purpose was to protect universal rights.

The Declaration was a genuine group product of the 56 accomplished delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson wrote the draft, but the others shortened it by one-fourth and made 80 changes.

A bubbling stew of popular agitation and Enlightenment philosophy had been heating up throughout the colonies for a decade. From this turmoil the Congress created an unprecedented political blueprint that galvanized the new country.

Erudition was not nearly enough. The British really were coming. Picture committing public treason in Philadelphia just when 400 Royal Navy ships were streaming into New York harbor to land 32,000 veterans of the best army in the world, with its 8,000 dreaded Hessian mercenaries, on Staten Island. Only 80 miles and George Washington’s 19,000 poorly equipped amateurs separated the delegates from a hangman’s noose.

Learnedness is not always paired with courage; this time it was.

The founders knew what lay ahead. John Adams wrote to his indispensable confidant, his wife, Abigail: “I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.”

Adams was right. Winning independence took seven long years of brutal fighting. Compared to the total population, far more Americans died in the Revolution than in World Wars I and II combined. Every family was touched in some way.

Not only did the mere words of the Declaration not magically establish an independent country, they did not suddenly manufacture liberty and equality for all. The gulf between theory and practice understandably leads some people to see hypocrisy and privilege in the fancy words of the founders.

But words and ideas can transcend the flawed humans who spoke then. Liberty and equality based on “self-evident” truths cannot logically be confined to any favored group. So the audacious ideals of the Declaration have been the north star for the continual evolution of liberty and equality in this and many other countries.

Those 56 delegates started something, but many other Americans have worked to finish it.

In 1776, demanding “the consent of the governed” meant white men with property, fewer than 10% of the population. And the assertion that all men are created equal simply ignored the cold-blooded enslavement of one-fifth of the total population and the oppression of women, Native Americans, and tens of thousands of indentured servants.

But then followed a seismic political metamorphosis: constitutional amendments 13, 14, 15, 19 and 26. The federal Indian Citizenship, Voting Rights, Civil Rights and Fair Housing Acts. A steady progression of Supreme Court cases and state voting rights and human rights acts.

Today every adult citizen of the United States can vote, except for some people convicted of felonies or deemed mentally incompetent. And courts today will enforce every person’s right to equal treatment in education, marriage, employment, housing, public accommodations and other domains.

These centuries of progress have not been in a straight line. Andrew Jackson’s cruel “removal” of Native Americans, the regression after Reconstruction, the inequality and corruption of the Gilded Age; the McCarthy witch-hunts, and Richard Nixon’s secret subversions of the rule of law all sidetracked the march toward equality and liberty for all. But they never stopped it.

A promissory note. That is what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called the unrealized ideals of the Declaration. They are not an excuse for disillusionment, but an obligation. It is our turn to make a payment.

We are in another radical departure from our long path toward the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration listed 26 insufferable transgressions by King George III. Reading them, you would think you are looking at the front page of any American newspaper in 2025: Undermining an independent judiciary. Transporting people “beyond Seas” and depriving people of “the benefits of Trial by Jury.” Cutting off trade. Obstructing legal immigration. Keeping “Standing Armies” among the population in times of peace.

We are divided and angry with each other. Witnessing unthinkable violence. Afraid. Baffled about how to steer through the chaos.

Independence Day is the time to remember that we are the heirs to one of history’s most potent manifestos. For all our conflicts, the vast majority of Americans remain committed to the beautiful ideals proclaimed on that 4th of July in Philadelphia 249 years ago. Our national cement is stressed, but it is tough.

Liberty. Equality. A government that exists only to protect them. These must remain our guideposts through this dark detour, as they have so many times in the past.

Bruce Peterson is a senior district judge and teaches a course on lawyers as peacemakers at the University of Minnesota Law School.