Happy Fourth

Two hundred and thirty years of liberty. I will leave you with some thoughts I think suitable to the occasion.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint. - Daniel Webster

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. - Andrew Jackson

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - Abraham Lincoln

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." - Martin Luther King

And of course:

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. - Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

Happy Birthday, America.

Update: Randy Barnett directs us to an address on the Fourth of July given by Fredrick Douglass here. Read the whole thing.