Ask your friends what they plan to do on the Fourth of July and many will likely respond by telling you what they "always" do: the concert on the Mall, a local fireworks display, the neighborhood parade with flag draped wagons or maybe an annual pilgrimage to the beach. America’s birthday calls for traditional celebrations, so we create our own rituals that are both patriotic and familiar. And then they become a part of who we are.

These comforting traditions stand in stark contrast to the first Independence Day on July 4, 1776, when the assembled members of the Continental Congress voted to create something brand new — a profoundly different model for the role of government among the civilized nations of the time. Their revolutionary declaration asserted the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and proclaimed that "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."



TODAY, we take that statement for granted. But in 1776 it was provocative and confrontational. Moreover, their Declaration was intended to insult King George III with accusations that his despotism was a form of treason to his own people, an affront that created an even bigger sensation at the time. Their challenge to tyranny would resonate across the world and through the ages.

Each Fourth of July when I participate in the Great Falls parade, the Vienna festival or gather with friends for the Langley High School fireworks celebration, I am reminded that our community involvement is both created from and affirmed by our shared beliefs about government. As we celebrate the nation’s birthday, we also hold up the civic groups and service and professional organizations that bind us together in common purpose, just as the members of the Continental Congress were bound 233 years ago, believing that they could achieve together what none of them could do alone.

My many years of public service and community involvement have reinforced my deeply held conviction about a basic principle of our democracy: that government should be what we do with people, not to them. When we bring people along and offer them the chance to participate in, rather than just observe the decisions that affect us, we are all stronger as a community and a society.



IN THE MIDST of our familiar and traditional Independence Day preparations, we can recommit ourselves through our own communities to that "new" idea from 1776 — the bold concept about a covenant between a just government and the consent of the governed. Whether we are elected, appointed or we volunteer, we can accomplish so much together through our civic associations, public councils and service groups that we can not do alone. Our task as Americans is to keep the idea of our democracy new. Let’s work together so that it remains a shining example for hopeful people everywhere.


By Margi Vanderhye

State Delegates (D-34)