That was the title of a Fox News column I wrote three years ago. It’s still appropriate:

It is instructive, and educational (particularly for those who haven’t seen it since high-school civics class, if then) to read aloud Jefferson’s work of genius, the Declaration of Independence. In so doing, we are reminded of the principles on which this country was founded, the offenses committed against our ancestors by the English king, and the reasons that we forged our own nation.

Note also that this is the 142nd anniversary of the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half. It was the beginning of the end for the southern cause, and for better or worse, helped preserve the young nation that had begun (in Lincoln’s words) four score and seven years before.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

Professor Reynolds has some related thoughts.