Jacob Hornberger, the founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation recently wrote the following commentary on the Real Meaning of the Fourth of July.

Contrary to popular myth, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not great Americans. Instead, they were great Englishmen. In fact, they were as much English citizens as Americans today are American citizens. It’s easy to forget that the revolutionaries in 1776 were people who took up arms against their own government.

So how is it that these men are considered patriots? Well, the truth is that their government didn’t consider them patriots at all. Their government considered them to be bad guys — traitors, all of whom deserved to be hanged for treason.

Most of us consider the signers of the Declaration of Independence to be patriots because of their courage in taking a stand against the wrongdoing and tyranny of their own government, even risking their lives in the process.

Yet not even the patriotism and courage of these English citizens constitutes the foremost significance of the Fourth of July, any more than the military victory over their government’s forces at Yorktown does.

Instead, the real significance of the Fourth of July lies in the expression of what is undoubtedly the most revolutionary political declaration in history: that man’s rights are inherent, God-given, and natural and, thus, do not come from government.

Throughout history, people have believed that their rights come from government. Such being the case, people haven’t objected whenever government officials infringed upon their rights. Since rights were considered to be government-bestowed privileges, the thinking went, why shouldn’t government officials have the power to regulate or suspend such privileges at will?

The Declaration of Independence upended that age-old notion of rights. All men — not just Americans — have been endowed by God and nature, not government, with fundamental and unalienable rights. Governments are called into existence by the people — and exist at their pleasure — for one purpose: to protect the exercise of these inherent rights.

What happens if a government that people have established becomes a destroyer, rather than a protector, of their rights? The Declaration provides the answer: It is the right of the people to alter or even abolish their government and establish new government whose purpose is the protection, not the destruction, of people’s rights and freedoms.

Read the rest at the Future of Freedom Foundation.

It’s worth noting that the tactics of the American Revolution employed violence while the civil disobedience advocated by many in the Shire is peaceful, which we consider evolutionary.