250 Years. It’s been one hell of a run, hasn’t it?

A quarter century ago, fifty-six men signed what was, in effect, their own death warrant. Had the Revolution failed, many would have been hanged as traitors to the British Crown. They knew the risks, yet they signed anyway.

With a few strokes of ink, those men told the most powerful empire on earth they would rather die as free men than live as subjects. King George III didn’t receive a petition. He received a declaration that his American colonies no longer recognized his authority.

There was no going back.

They lived in a world without electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, automobiles, telephones, antibiotics, airplanes, radio, television, or computers. They endured hardships that most Americans today can scarcely imagine. Yet from that ordinary generation came one of the most extraordinary ideas in human history: that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that our rights come not from kings or politicians, but from our Creator; and that free men and women are capable of governing themselves.

Those principles changed the world.

When I stop and consider what those men accomplished, I find it difficult to believe it was simply the product of circumstance. These were men living by candlelight, traveling on horseback, with none of the comforts or technology we take for granted today. Yet they produced documents so profound that free people still study them 250 years later. History will always debate whether Divine Providence played a role in America’s birth. I can only say that when I consider what they achieved against such impossible odds, I find it difficult to believe Almighty God was not watching over the birth of this nation.

Against overwhelming odds, a collection of thirteen small colonies challenged the most powerful empire on earth… and somehow prevailed. Whether by determination, providence, or a remarkable combination of both, they gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Two hundred and fifty years later, those documents are still studied, debated, defended, and admired around the globe. Everything that followed traces its roots to that extraordinary beginning.

America became the world’s largest economy. We invented the airplane and transformed transportation. We developed the microchip that powers modern civilization. American research laid the foundation for the Internet. We walked on the Moon, helped build the International Space Station, launched the Hubble Space Telescope, and pushed back the frontiers of medicine, agriculture, communications, transportation, technology, manufacturing, and energy. Our universities, laboratories, entrepreneurs, and inventors transformed discoveries into industries that improved the lives of billions of people around the world, not just Americans.

Twice during the twentieth century, America used its strength not to conquer nations, but to defeat regimes whose victories would have changed the course of human history. Rather than claiming conquered lands, as conquering nations had done throughout history, we helped rebuild them.

No nation is perfect, and neither is America. We’ve stumbled. We’ve argued. We’ve made mistakes, and at times we’ve fallen painfully short of our own ideals. But the genius of the American experiment has never been perfection. It has been the freedom to recognize our failures, correct our course, and keep moving forward. Perhaps that explains why millions still dream of coming here, while comparatively few dream of leaving.

The greatest American achievement was not the airplane, the Moon landing, the Internet, or even the unprecedented prosperity that followed. It was the idea: the radical, improbable, almost unbelievable idea that ordinary people could govern themselves. For 250 years, generation after generation has inherited that idea, defended it, improved it, and passed it on to the next.

Those fifty-six men are gone, but the responsibility they accepted now belongs to us. We are merely the latest custodians of an experiment in liberty that has endured for two and a half centuries.

Now it is our turn.

Happy 250th Birthday, America.

May we prove as worthy of our inheritance as those remarkable men proved worthy of theirs.