The WAY to WOW Shows
Make Independence Day Meaningful!
July 4, 2026
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:02] Who [music] are you and where are you going? [music] What do you want? Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Way to Wow shows for Independence Day, July 4th, 20126, the 250th anniversary of our country. So for those of you who are regular watchers of the show, you know I do a Independence Day uh reading of the

[0:39] Declaration of Independence every year. I think it's important for us to do that, to renew our understanding of the founding of this great nation and to rededicate ourselves to what what what we stand for, what our country stands for, and to um bring to mind how blessed we are with all of the problems that we have here to live in the United States of America.

[1:14] So, thinking about what I wanted to talk about this year, it it struck me that when I talk about the uh three pillars of attainment, I often discuss this idea of purpose and mission. And to my mind, the Declaration of Independence states the purpose of our country where and the Constitution of the United States essentially describes our mission and

[1:50] and if if you're if you don't have uh this wonderful book that I've shown many many times, the American Reader, uh which I I you know This this version of it is is is out of print. You can get just a a small version. You can see how small this is of this is the United States Constitution with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation which which preceded the Declaration of Independence. And I think it is valuable to uh read through these documents

[2:25] periodically at least once a year. So the Declaration of Independence like our purpose, it describes who we are, okay, as a nation and as a people. In in biblical times, of course, nation and peoplehood were the same thing. So when we talk about uh the children of Israel, that was a people, but it was also a nation. The Egyptians were a people and a nation. Same with the Canaanites, the Jebusites, etc. So we as

[3:00] Americans, we embody our nation. The nation in in in many ways has no meaning outside of us, her citizens who are the ones who make up the nation. And so when I when I do the reading of the Declaration of Independence in a few minutes, I invite you to think about what does this say about our our identity and and I'll be talking about the Constitution on Constitution Day. But the Constitution is really talking about what our mission is. this idea of

[3:37] of a a federal government, a separation of powers, all of that is actionoriented because it deals with the actual operations, the governance of our nation. And so just like when we have a purpose, so my purpose among other things and my purpose for example is a citizen of the United States. It's to be uh someone who um uh um is is athletic, who is um polyilingual, right? Whereas

[4:13] my mission is to help people live better lives using the three pillars of attainment, right? So that's that's how I distinguish between those two. So, uh, I'm going to, um, read the, uh, Declaration of Independence that's, uh, here in the American Reader. Um, and, uh, yeah, here we go. On, it's on start. It's on page 20. Okay. And Okay. And it it takes me uh, you know, a a little

[4:49] bit of time. Um, I I'm going to read it slowly so you can hear it, absorb it. [snorts] And to my mind, the two most important things we can do on this day are one, to fly our American flag, and my flag is uh is is flying. Uh, and two, to read the Declaration of Independence, preferably with our family or our family and friends, our loved ones, [snorts] and to spend a little while talking about what its meaning is to make it

[5:24] vital, as vital for today as it was 250 years ago. Okay. Declaration of Independence in Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the

[5:59] separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitled them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among

[6:34] these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on

[7:10] such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety. and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments longest established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing

[7:47] the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurppations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute desperatism. It is their right. It is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufference of these colonies, and such is now the

[8:22] necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurppations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his ascent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the

[8:58] public good. He has forgid forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing important unless suspended in their operation till his ascent should be obtained. And when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in legislature.

[9:34] A right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their records, of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of

[10:09] the people. He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large for their exercise. The state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states.

[10:45] for the purpose for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his ascent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their

[11:21] salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power. He has combined with others to subject

[11:56] us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unagnowledged by our laws. giving his ascent to their acts of pretended legislation. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. For protecting them by a mock trial. From punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. for imposing taxes on us

[12:34] without our consent. for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury, for trans transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, there establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for in introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies.

[13:10] For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and

[13:46] [clears throat] destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and peribi scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become

[14:22] the exe executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrection against us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most

[14:58] humble terms. are repeated our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is mar is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting an attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by

[15:33] their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and mag and magnimity. And we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurppations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

[16:09] They too have been death have been deaf to the voice of justice and consuanity. We must therefore [snorts] acquies in the necessity which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind enemies in war in peace. Friends, we therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress

[16:47] assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitudes rectitude of our intentions, do in name and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states, and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and

[17:22] that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and indep independent states. They have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. and for the support of this declaration

[17:59] and with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. It's not a particularly long document. But it's a very powerful one. And in writing it at the request of John Adams,

[18:36] Thomas Jefferson, I think extraordinarily well identified the core of who we are as Americans. And so it it is my hope that on this Independence Day, the 250th anniversary of our country, and hopefully all future Independence Days, we will at least for a brief moment set

[19:12] aside our differences and come together as one people in recognition mission of what God helped our founding fathers create here in North America and take satisfaction in the progress we've made over these 250 years in the help that we have rendered to our allies in the

[19:49] conquering of our baser natures to improve on adhering more closely to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and to rededicate ourselves to doing even better in the future. So, I wish you a meaningful, a moving, a wonderful Independence Day. I hope you enjoy the time with family and friends, loved ones.

[20:24] Maybe go see a fireworks show and uh have some food together, and perhaps you'll meet someone with whom you have profound disagreements. I ask you to offer that person your hand as your fellow citizen in this country and embrace them as the countryman that they are and celebrate together. So, thank you so much for joining me for

[21:00] a short period of time on this Independence Day. I wish you a wonderful rest of the day and weekend. And no show, no way to wow show would be complete without my sign off to my dear Marie, a wonderful American, a woman who deeply loved this country. Marie darling, you are and ever will be my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.