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With just months to go before the 250th birthday of the United States, thoughts this morning from bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson:

We've got a big birthday coming up next year – our 250th. Here's my wish: Let's not blow this opportunity. 

We're so polarized these days that we may not be in the mood for a party. Everything seems to divide us.

But perhaps we can use this opportunity to celebrate what unites us, rather than stoke the things that divide us, just like we did for our Bicentennial after the fraught years of Vietnam and Watergate.

One way to do it is by reflecting on our shared creed, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence sentence that begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

about how the drafting committee, which included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, went through four versions of this sentence.

"We hold these truths to be sacred ... " Jefferson wrote in the first draft. Franklin crossed out "sacred" and wrote in "self-evident." The declaration they were writing was intended to herald a new type of nation, one in which our rights are based on reason, not the dictates of religion.

But then the sentence invokes the "Creator." Jefferson wrote that people "derive rights," and Adams changed it to "they are endowed by their Creator" with rights.

Thus we see our Founders balancing the role of divine providence and that of reason in determining our rights. They understood how to balance competing ideals, a talent we should relearn these days.

At the signing of the Declaration, John Hancock wrote his name with his famous flourish. "We must all hang together," they said that he insisted. Franklin replied, alluding to what would happen if their revolution failed, "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we'll all hang separately."

As Franklin pointed out, our life-or-death challenge as a nation is this: When there are so many forces dedicated to dividing us, how can we best hang together?

One way to do it is by reflecting on our fundamental principles, the ones proclaimed in the Declaration's great sentence.

Happy birthday!

     
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Story produced by Julie Kracov. Editor: Chad Cardin.