July Fourth is Independence Day, a celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence two and a third centuries ago. Americans are moved by stirring renditions of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and get emotionally caught up in the excitement of the moment. But it is more important to have a thoughtful understanding of the ideas behind the songs and celebrations to carry with us the rest of the year.

Flags fly proudly on this day, but what does it mean to honor them? The flag represents the fundamental principles upon which this nation was built, principles which countless men and women fought and died for since the birth of the American dream. Those principles command our respect because they are good and right and honorable, and laid the groundwork for the free society that rose from a vast wilderness in a very short period of time.

Honoring the flag means vigilance against the enemies of freedom, whether those enemies are located in far away lands or in the halls of our own government. It is a sad note that we have many enemies of freedom right within our own borders, among the vast array of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, state capitals, and even many city halls. America is not the first country to have an oppressive bureaucracy. Many societies of the past have collapsed because the beast of bureaucracy got out of hand. It became ravenous, eating the substance of the people, who are the only source of wealth and prosperity in any society.

Americans, your beast is getting out of hand. It is devouring the great society built up from a base of limited government and a maximum of freedom, personal responsibility, and voluntary cooperation. It is doing so only because the American people are allowing it.

It is not a new phenomenon. John Philpot Curran (1730-1817) was an Irish politician and orator at the turn of the nineteenth century. He noted what happens when people don’t hold their governments in check: “It is the common fate of the indolent [lazy, inactive people] to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition, if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment for his guilt.”

Let us not be guilty of that indolence any longer. Let us take up the lamp of vigilance and hold the actions of all politicians up to the light of our treasured principles. Let us subject them to scrutiny and hold them accountable. They have been working in the dark, binding us with laws that have nothing to do with protecting the life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, or property of individual citizens. They instead consolidate power in the hands of the few and subject the citizens to the whims and the will of the powerful, the lobbyists, the special interests and those arrogant enough to think themselves worthy.

We are on the well-worn path to national bankruptcy and collapse, with Argentina, the Soviet Union and Greece as templates for the future. The only way we will turn back is if Americans decide that liberty is better than goodies stolen from someone else, goodies used to dull the senses and buy indolence from the population, goodies used even by Roman emperors to buy allegiance in the face of growing tyranny and confiscation.

Independence Day commemorates the time when colonists threw off tyranny and put in place a system based on the dignity of the individual and unalienable rights, which are owed to people of every land, nationality, race, and creed. America is unique in history as being the only country ever to be founded on the vast ocean of rights of the individual and the strict, explicit limitation of government.

Americans must once again take up a vigilant watch against their own politicians who grasp for power, who don’t pledge allegiance to the principles on which this country was founded, and who look for inspiration to the failing, corrupt, socialist European countries that are bankrupt financially, politically and morally.

Let us celebrate Independence Day, but let us celebrate more the wisdom of those who came before. Let us look with awe at the magnificent fireworks, but remember with awe and confidence our heritage. Use the opportunity to make a renewed commitment to stand up for that heritage of freedom and against those who have the audacity to try to take it away.