On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution for independence. Two days later, the delegates followed up with a statement of principles—the Declaration of Independence—explaining “to a candid world” why separation from Britain was both right and “necessary.” 

No other nation celebrates a statement of principles as its birthday. They celebrate treaties, wars, and constitutions, but never ideas—only Americans do this. 

Abraham Lincoln compared the Constitution to a picture frame, with the Declaration as the picture. The frame is a structure that exists for the purpose of holding something more important. The Constitution, brilliant as it is, exists to uphold the principles of the Declaration. 

When President Calvin Coolidge celebrated our nation’s 150th birthday, he explained that Americans had “believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” long before independence. 

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. … These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American. 

The “great truths” set forth in the second paragraph of the Declaration establish the legitimate purpose of government and thus limits on its power. As OCPA works to hold government accountable, to stop its growth, to force it to spend taxpayer dollars wisely—or to tax us less—it is working to uphold these truths. This is most obviously true in areas like school choice, where OCPA works to shift power from politicians and bureaucrats back to families. 

Beyond public policy, OCPA educates Oklahomans about the principles of the Declaration, particularly through our Fears Fellowship. We agree with this warning from Coolidge, also in his Independence Day speech.

A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man—these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.