Today we celebrate Independence Day! Two hundred and forty-four years ago our Founding Fathers gathered to sign the Declaration of Independence and with it, their lives, and fortunes. A year before that, brave patriots gathered at Lexington and Concord ready to sacrifice everything so that posterity could enjoy the freedoms they so longed for.

That "shot heard round the world" still echoes just as loud today as it did on that fateful April day in Massachusetts. I hear it in the halls of Congress as we debate legislation, from our boots on the ground across the world, and from our friends and families singing the national anthem at Traveler’s games.

These freedoms we enjoy are not free. They have been paid for by the perseverance of brave men and women in the face of tyranny.

The words of our Declaration are no less true today than when they were drafted nearly two and a half centuries ago:

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. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

Although this year the celebrations will be different with a few more masks and no mass gatherings, nothing will stop us from celebrating our independence. Regardless of the circumstances, the world still looks to us for leadership and it is our duty to stay strong for future generations just as our forefathers did for us. But like all challenges we have faced in the past, we will come through this stronger than ever as one nation under God.