As you read this column, another Independence Day has come and gone. It’s been 237 years since our forefathers declared our independence from Great Britain.The historic Declaration of Independence was penned mostly by Thomas Jefferson, who described it as “an expression of the American mind,” meant to “place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”Jefferson’s words ring out across the centuries to inspire us still today: “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 these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”President Abraham Lincoln said later when future generations of Americans read the Declaration of Independence they would realize their “right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”The premise of the Declaration is pointed and profound: Since individuals equally possess “certain unalienable rights by nature, government derives its just power from the consent of the governed.” Abuse of power by the government can become grounds for the governed to alter or abolish that government.