Ah, July—the month of cold lemonade under a shady tree, baseball, fireflies and grilling hot dogs. And, of course, Fourth of July fireworks!

While for kids the Fourth may mean sparklers, picnics and a grand display of colors bursting in air, the elder among us (or at least those who have completed at least a modicum of American history classes) know the real celebration is of a few dedicated souls who risked everything for a grand experiment in freedom that the rest of the world was fairly unanimous in believing destined to fail. After all, no matter how intelligent or influential some of those original patriots may have been, who seriously believed those few solid souls could stand up against the greatest national power on earth for a mere fortnight, much less the years of struggle necessary to birth freedom for a new nation? Their unexpected triumph cries out for celebration!

Often such successes are referred to as David versus Goliath stories. I'd like to suggest a better analogy for our purposes: the little kid who drives you crazy asking “why, why, why?” Although the final result rested on a triumph of arms, it began with a simple question: “Why do you think you have the right to do these things to us?” And when the answers basically came back as “Because we said so,” what began as mere puzzlement turned into something far more.