"Let facts be submitted to a candid world"

...These United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States: they are Absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved...

And with those words, thirteen British Colonies threw caution to the wind, severed their colonial ties and began an experiment in liberal democracy. The fact that their experiment has lasted for more than 230 years is surely a testament to the foresight and determination of the Founders.

The Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was an expansion of a resolution offered by Continental Congress Delegate Richard Henry Lee a month earlier.

Influenced heavily by the likes of John Locke, Thomas Paine, and other Enlightenment Thinkers, as well as the Dutch Republic's Oath of Abjuration in 1581, the Declaration served as a formal indictment against the distant and arbitrary rule of King George III.

Of course, like most everything else in life, the Declaration contains a contradiction or two, most notably the line about all men being created equal. That sounds real good, but skip ahead a few paragraphs and note the line about the "merciless Indian Savages" whom the colonists had to "deal with." Also apparently not falling under the definition of "all men" were African-Americans and women.

Aside from that dichotomous depiction of relative equality, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, while not exactly all that original (but what is), is in my opinion a work of art.