"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..."
They didn't really mean THAT, of course. Not ALL. They didn't mean women, or men who didn't own property, or Blacks (enslaved or otherwise). And certainly not the "merciless Indian Savages" cited later in the document.
But it was a start. A damn good start. An all-important start. The generations that followed have built on it. Progress has been made. Not in a straight line, but in Dr. King's words, the arc has bent toward justice.
Our record in those 250 years has been far from spotless. But I'll stack it up against anybody else's.
So... Happy Birthday to us. Not just to the U.S. To US. This land is your land, this land is my land, etc. etc.
I raise my glass to the next 250.