Each Fourth of July Americans celebrate the birth of their country with barbecues and fireworks, but many overlook what made this day special. This year, its relevance is magnified as citizens turn out in overwhelming numbers to protest the abuses the government has perpetrated on us. But it also urges steadfastness and patience, lessons we can take with us to the anti-tax rallies.

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the language of the Declaration of Independence, the document that served to “dissolve the political bands” between the American colonists and the British Crown. Although the Declaration didn't trigger the Revolutionary War--fighting already broke out in 1775--the Declaration is important because it increased colonial unification and fortified the moral high ground by justifying the rebellion with charges against King George III and appeals to God, Natural Law, and the Rights of Man for redress.

Those appeals are the enduring legacy of this founding document and should be understood by every Tea Party participant this Independence Day.

The Declaration opens with John Adams' words:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The “Laws of Nature”, or Natural Law, as found in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651), is “a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may best be preserved."

Adams invokes Hobbes to say that individuals have a right to act in their self-interest, even if that act results in the dissolution of political bands with their brethren. He then states that there exists an obligation to list the premises on which that concept is based.

Thomas Jefferson resumes Adam's preamble with the most famous sentence in the Declaration:

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.

Jefferson almost quotes John Locke's Two Treatises in Government (1689) in verbatim, in which Locke wrote that Natural Law preserves “the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.” Supposedly, Jefferson replaced the latter part of the phrase with “pursuit of Happiness” so as to not alienate the southern colonies that regarded slaves as goods.

The fame of the eloquent “we hold these truths to be self-evident” sentence has overshadowed the bombshell that Jefferson drops immediately after it.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...

Jefferson reiterates Adams' assertion that man has the right to abolish the government when it violates the Social Contract, another Lockean concept. The Social Contract states that government is contractually obligated to not abuse its subjects it certain ways (to not take away life, liberty, health, limb, or goods), and if that obligation is breached the subjects may dissolve the government.

As powerful as that statement is, Jefferson nevertheless softened it by saying “alter or abolish” rather than just advocate outright abolition. The Founders did not prefer revolution at the outset of problems; nor should anyone today. Revolutions are violent, destructive, and risky affairs. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes,” Jefferson writes, as he continues to soften the blow.

Then Jefferson delivers a devastating knockout punch:

...that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Despite our abhorrence to revolution we will toil with the yoke of government oppression for only so long, and when that time comes it is not only our right, but our duty, to exercise that right.

Jefferson then enumerates the “long train of abuses and usurpations” (another Lockean phrase), which include “altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments” and “imposing Taxes on us without Our consent”. He doesn't spare the government's supporters either, but presents an olive branch by writing that our British brethren are our “Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

The final paragraph is a summation of the previous arguments, closing with the eternal:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The signers understood that if they lost the war they would certainly be destroyed, and it was with a great deal of courage that they affixed their names to the parchment.

Take these principles, articulated in the Declaration of Independence, with you to the Tea Parties across the country this Independence Day.

Realize, as you watch the nighttime fireworks, that the Declaration is so important that its adoption serves as the official birthday of the United States.

Understand, as you peacefully gather to protest government abuses, that the Founders warned against dissolving long-established governments for “light and transient causes”. Idle boasts of revolution and the taking up of arms is unnecessary and foolish. At the time the Founders decided to dissolve ties with Britain, we were already at war and King George had dispatched mercenaries to slaughter the rebels. Jefferson mentioned alteration of abusive government before he mentions its abolition.

Remember, that although you are angry and in pain, that the Founders clenched their teeth and bore the discomfort for as long as they could, and so claimed the moral high ground. But they would not hold their tongues when abused at the hands of the state, and issued a fair warning to their oppressors that they would not initiate trouble, but once engaged would never surrender.