So wrote King George III of Great Britain, July 4, 1776. He was wrong, of course. But in the current atmosphere of bitter partisanship, elections decided more by the amount of money spent than by the issues of the candidates or the beliefs of the voters, an Administration that seems to be either deceptive, incompetent, or willfully ignorant, it's a little harder to dispute KG III's words than it was 228 years ago, or 100 years ago, or even 25 years ago. The idealism comes and goes, however. Certainly in the early 1950s, many felt that McCarthyism was in stark violation of the dream expressed by teh Declaration of Independence. But just a decade later, the United States had embarked on the greatest concrete expression of that dream in a century. So we should view the USA of 2004 not as a betrayal, but as a challenge to once again examine the beliefs that brought about this nation, and determine how to implement this present union in the light of a document written two centuries ago. As George Mason wrote a few weeks before the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "No free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."