When America’s Founders signed the Declaration, knowing that, as Ben Franklin observed, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” they loosed forces that would eventually create something new under the sun: Broad-based, self-government that could endure throughout the years.

In 1776, representative government was rare in the course of human events. Government was generally repressive in nature, brutal in means, and arbitrary in action. If the king or emperor wanted your crops, livestock, or sons, he took them; if you resisted you might die on the spot or waste away in prison, your hopes resting not with appeals to law, but at the whim of a totalitarian government.

Creating a democracy had always been difficult; what was even more difficult was sustaining one. From the Greek city-states onward, a new democracy might prosper for awhile, but then fall under the burdens of crisis: wars of conquest, invasions, famines, civil unrest and the like.

As we celebrate the Fourth today, we need to remember where government has been and where we are today. When the signers put quill to paper, monarchs and tyrants of various stripes ruled most of the world and the evidence of all human experience suggested that would remain so. (A decade after the signing, the French Revolution, thought by many to be a dawning of more widespread freedom, disintegrated into the blood and chaos of the guillotine.)

Yet our republic has prospered for more than two centuries: No where else in the world have so many people of different races, ethnic groups, cultures, and religions lived together in freedom, peace and wide-spread prosperity.

Our flaws were visible from the start. But through the years America has shown an unrivaled capacity to absorb different peoples into the mainstream. Like any nation—like any collection of people anywhere any time—we still have our flaws. The marvel is that we have created ways to address these flaws peacefully so that, year after year, more people enjoy America’s freedoms and blessings.

We can also be proud that America was an essential part of the impressive rise of democracy around the world during the 20th Century. Before WW I only a handful of nations could justly claim to be true democracies. Today, according to the Freedom House Report, “Democracy’s Century,” that number is 85 and those nations are home for 38 percent of the world’s population.

After America helped bring an end to World War I, the old monarchies and empires lost their hold, and, slowly, more people began to enjoy wider political freedoms. After America helped prevent the victory of the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini in WW II, representative government and freedom began to rise again—although Stalin and the communists brutally repressed the people of Eastern Europe for half-a-century.

After WW II America planted representative government once more in Germany and for the first time in Japan. Conventional wisdom said Japan’s history and culture meant democracy could not possibly work there. Fortunately, the people of Japan did not know that, and today Japan ranks in the top tier of free nations.

Now, America hopes to enable Iraqis and others in the Middle East to enjoy some form of self-rule, with the attendant liberty and rule of law. On this Fourth we are all grateful, for the men and women of our armed forces and other agencies who are fighting a prime threat to freedom in our era—terrorism—and trying to expand the reach of freedom to others, while keeping our treasured freedom here at home.

Freedom remains, if not rare, limited to too few of the world’s people. This should spur us to savor our own freedom more deeply today as we celebrate what was a turning point not only in our own history but the world’s history. Let us not forget the meaning of the 4th of July.

Joe Cwik is the Chairman of the Hall County Republican Party of Georgia.