Every year on July 4, Americans celebrate a miracle: the founding of the United States of America. Our Declaration of Independence has 1,337 eloquent words, crafted by Thomas Jefferson and the 56 members of the Second Continental Congress. Those words turned the world upside down.

To this day, our Declaration of Independence is the only seminal document of any nation on earth to pay homage to God Almighty. No other founding instrument reflects on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” nor does any other proclaim all people are “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

No other national manuscript appeals to the “Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions.” Nor does any such proclamation place the fate of its founders in the hands of God with a prayer: “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.”

Our Founders’ stirring prose, their affirmation of “self-evident,” God-given “Truths” and their carefully constructed “bill of particulars” listing 27 tyrannical offenses perpetrated by Britain’s monarch are without parallel in justifying independence. And there is more — the extraordinary assertion: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”

In 1776, it was one thing to express these concepts on parchment but quite another to make them reality. Standing in the way of achieving the Founders’ vision was the largest, best-equipped and best-trained military land and sea forces in the world. The Americans, on the other hand, had no Army or Navy; just patriots determined to be free.

The reason our country even exists today can be summarized in one word: sacrifice. The Founders and Gen. George Washington’s intrepid citizen-soldiers risked everything for freedom.

All 56 visionaries who signed the Declaration of Independence were declared to be traitors to the British crown, tried in-absentia, hunted, hounded and sentenced to death if caught. Fourteen of the signers didn’t live to celebrate our victory over the British at Yorktown, Virginia, on Friday, October 19, 1781. By then, Washington’s citizen-soldiers endured seven years of starvation, crippling wounds, frostbite, disease, exhaustion and continual defeats, yet persevered to win American independence.

Contrast this with what’s happened since Joe Biden became president. Washington and our Founders did everything in their power to build the meager American military. Biden seems determined to tear down our military. Rather than properly funding national defense, Biden proposes major budget cuts and diverting funds to his pet social programs. Instead of ensuring America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines are the best equipped, best trained troops in the world, Biden and his “progressive” puppet masters are using our military as a laboratory for social experimentation and indoctrination in leftist orthodoxy. Sadly, pension-protecting politicians, masquerading as generals, are going along to get along.

While Communist China is building a navy surpassing ours in both size and capabilities, U.S. military leaders are indoctrinating American troops in critical race theory and supposed “white privilege.” Chinese military leaders are equipping and training the largest standing army in the world while U.S. military leaders provide sex reassignment operations to transgender troops at taxpayers’ expense. As Chinese Communist officers use extensive budgets to buy influence around the world, U.S.-elected officials are undermining America’s credibility by refusing to honor commitments to allies like Afghani interpreters who have faithfully served our nation’s military for nearly two decades.

If Biden and his fellow “progressives” were in charge on July 4, 1776, there would never have been a Declaration of Independence and America would still be a British colony.

COPYRIGHT 2021 OLIVER L. NORTH AND DAVID L. GOETSCH