Liberty Lives Here #15: Happy 250th Birthday America!
Liberty Lives Here is a yearlong blog series celebrating 250 years of American liberty. Every two weeks, throughout 2026, we will be sharing stories of men and women whose lives helped shape the nation we call home. Some are well known. Others are easy to overlook. Each story invites us to slow down, look closely, and remember that liberty has always been built through faith, courage, and everyday faithfulness.
What really happened on the Fourth of July? In this special Independence Day episode of Real Cool History for Kids, we’ll travel back to 1776 to uncover the remarkable story behind America’s birth.
Discover why the thirteen colonies chose independence, explore some of the lesser-known reasons Thomas Jefferson included in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, and learn about a powerful passage that was removed before the final document was adopted.
Filled with fascinating history, inspiring stories of courage, and a Biblical perspective on freedom, this episode reminds us that the Fourth of July is about much more than fireworks—it’s the story of the brave men and women who risked everything for liberty.
Liberty is Never Ordinary
As Americans, it is often easy to take our country for granted or even to adopt an attitude of complacency and criticism. I recently returned from a two-week trip to several European countries. Although it was exciting to mark these experiences off of my bucket list, the most interesting part of the trip was the startling realization of how truly different America is from the rest of the world. Although there were admirable elements of each nation we visited, not one of them had the vast spirit of liberty we experience here every day or the atmosphere of freedom our nation imminates. Although I have always been extremely patriotic, my love for America tripled and quadrupled in those two weeks.
As I have processed this experience and considered what I would like to write for this post, my mind settled on this fact: Liberty is never ordinary. For 250 years, America has offered freedom and liberty that much of the world has never known and still does not know today.
Our freedom of speech, our freedom of worship, our freedom to make decisions for ourselves, and our freedom to bear arms are practically unheard of throughout the rest of the world. We must never take them for granted. We must always preserve them for the next generations. A nation of citizens who know, live by, and protect their rights is a formidable blockade against foreign and domestic threats.
As the 250th anniversary of the United States of America has approached, I have contemplated the principles on which our nation was founded. These principles of liberty, which guide our systems of government, were not concocted in the minds of men. Human minds do not determine the laws of liberty any more than the physical weight of an object determines the law of gravity. God is the Creator of both the laws of liberty and of gravity, and He alone gives them to us as a gift. We as humans must determine to live by them and allow others to do so as well.
This is what makes our nation so unique. Never before in the history of humankind has a nation been established on such principles and safeguarded by a system of checks and balances which, if applied correctly and as intended, allows the system to breathe and grow as if it were a living thing. There will never be a perfect government created by humans for humans. Conflict will always be present until the return of Christ when He comes to establish His Kingdom on earth, but the government for the people, by the people, established by the men who sacrificed so much to do so, is the best one the world has experienced yet.
This concept of accepting the imperfections of any human government or nation reminds me of this quote from my new high school American history course, One Nation Under God…
Behind the Constitution is the powerful concept of accepting that conflict, which is part of the fallen sinful nature of man, will always be part of the government of an earthly nation. We can think of this conflict as a combustion engine being kept within its chamber where it can be useful. The energies generated by the oftentimes conflicting diverse views and philosophies are contained by the Constitution, and as long as all parties can agree to the authority of the Constitution and the guidelines it offers, the American government will continue to run.
One Nation Under God
From Miss Agatha Liberty…
Sometimes courage means celebrating the immense work done by generations of Liberty-lovers before us. At the same time, we must commit to carry on their work to protect the liberty they gave their lives to. Happy Birthday, America, you can count on us!
