America has been fighting for the ideal of liberty since 1776

Two hundred fifty years is a long time, and 1776 can feel very far from us.It was a world of kings and gilded hierarchy, of slavery and deference, of wives promising obedience, of empires and colonies.Elite men sported powdered wigs and short breeches under long floral waistcoats.

Their daughters sucked in their breath to squeeze into stays, corsets and petticoats.The most reliable sources of information were four-page newspapers and letters written with quills dipped in ink pots, both of which took at least two months to cross the Atlantic.The fiercest weapons were cannons and muskets.

Heck, they didn’t even have electricity or flushing toilets. Yet for all the differences, the founding generation of America still speaks to us. A few of those men in wigs crafted an extraordinary document, the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, in which they announced to the world their decision to become a new nation.The United States commemorates the publication of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 as the founding event.For 250 years, people all over the world have looked to it as an inspiration and a guide.

Yet what is of such world historical importance is not just the ink-stained Declaration itself, but the positive principles that informed it.These values were not restricted to Founding Fathers in 13 British colonies (and by the way, there were actually 26 British American colonies in 1775).Those ideals — such as life, happiness and equality — emerged out of a world shot through with what people saw as oppression, what one New England minister called “enslaved Empires.”Americans were willing to take extraordinary risks and even to make the ultimate sacrifice of their “Lives … Fortunes, and … sacred Honor” in order to support these values.Ordinary soldiers marched with their muskets into hellish landscapes, sometimes with bodies so thick on the ground that it was almost impossible to walk. One word on a powder horn carried into battle sta...