Note: Rob will be participating in several parades and tea party events this weekend, and would love to meet and talk with conservative voters across the district. Find out where Rob will be speaking.

Independence Day is often a time when Americans reflect on the courage and leadership shown by visionary statesmen in our country on July 4, 1776, pledging their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause of a new nation.

They were visionary, and they showed great courage, from Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” to George Washington’s leadership during the Revolutionary War. But in many ways, those Founding Fathers were really just average citizens who were upset with the tyranny imposed on them by a government that would not listen to them, and in which they had no true representation.

They were just like citizens today, facing a mounting burden of taxes, regulations, and government intrusion. Or families today, who face a government and a court system that continue to ignore the basic moral fabric that was so important in the founding of our civil society. Or the teacher whose retirement funds have been decimated because Congress demanded banks make bad housing loans that would cripple them financially down the road. Or the voter whose sacred right to elect our leaders is trampled because our governments won’t require simple voter ID checks at the polls.

Independence Day is a day to celebrate liberty, and a day to renew our own personal commitment to preserving liberty in our country. Abraham Lincoln, in the Gettysburg Address, said our nation was “conceived in liberty” and urged us to pursue it, so that “government of the people, by the people and for the people should not perish from the earth.”

More recently, Ronald Reagan reminded all of us that “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

This Fourth of July, let’s consider carefully the direction our elected representatives are taking our country, and where that course may lead. In this time of reflection and celebration, let’s renew our commitment to restoring the values our Founding Fathers fought for so many years ago, the deep respect for life and liberty that must necessarily undergird a free people in a free union.

Some recommended links:

• Tea Party Patriots – Find a Tea Party in your area and meet others who believe in liberty
• Americana Phonic – presenting free audio narrations of documents such as the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers
• John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty – Bartleby.com presents the classic essay on liberty
• WallBuilders.com – a great web site that examines our national heritage