Every year we celebrate our independence from an Imperial nation that denied us self-rule, dignity and freedom.

It's a time of marching bands, waving flags, capped with cloud-brushing, soaring multicolored flashes of fireworks, lighting the night sky, to the sound of oohs and aahs from crowds across the nation. John Adams imagined these celebrations when the declaration of independence was written and signed in 1776.

These celebrations evoke the language of the declaration hammered out in a hot Philadelphia Hall, striking and revising the words of Thomas Jefferson, setting forth who we believed we were as a nation aborning.

We must reflect upon the sentiments of that grand occasion, and not just on the 4th, and consider how we may fulfill those worthy sentiments today when our independence is at risk from within and from without, including, according to intelligence sources and a Senate Committee, a foreign nation state, Russia, that interfered in our last two presidential elections.

When we declared our independence, we said we believed that we were all "created equal." We have struggled since to perfect that sentiment, but of late, persons of color, women and others are treated as suspect by many, and, unfortunately, this is especially true among the current the Republican "leaders."

We should respect the declaration's notion that "prudence" does dictate that "governments long established," as ours, "should not be changed for light and transient causes," but we watched over recent years how critical functions in the Executive Department were compromised or destroyed by Cabinet Officers and especially by the past Chief Executive, Mr. Trump.

Because "we the people" knew we were better than this, that our nation had to do better, we elected Joe Biden last November, choosing normalcy and accountability over the chaos and autocratic impulses of the orange menace in the West Wing.

Our declaration of independence declared, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Because of what was a daily sufferance under the last presidential Administration, we gave our consent to "fighting Joe Biden" who promised a restoration of the Republic.

Our Declaration of Independence was an indictment of oppressive rule.

The Declaration sanctioned Great Britain when the King had "refused his assent to laws…"

We had a Chief Executive, Trump, who would be King who failed to respect and enforce our laws, who favored court rulings only if they favored his "rule." The nation recoiled from his lawless leadership, from his autocratic rule by bullying fiats.

As was true of King George, we had a Chief Executive who failed "to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance."

Among them were laws and regulations to sustain the health care of millions of Americans, the protections necessary for our air and water, to safeguard our public lands, to respect migrants seeking asylum, and to provide for the "general welfare."

Biden has since corrected these past failures and omissions with a stimulus bill, executive orders, and, as important, how he conducts himself as our Chief Executive, as he speaks to the people. Of course, it is a quilt of mostly quiet incomplete work that remains unwoven.

Like King George, we had a Chief Executive who "obstructed the Administration of Justice …" We now have Chief Executive Biden who seeks to be transparent, even as he errs.

In regal fashion, claiming unprecedented power to do as he wished, our past Chief Executive Trump fired those who dared to investigate or question his conduct. Elected officials couldn't pass a bill to block efforts by Chief Executive Trump to fire the Special Counsel charged with investigating him.

Ultimately, the Special Counsel detailed efforts to obstruct his investigation and to fire him, prompting elected officials to make strong critical statements, impeached him twice but failed to indict his obstruction, or to remove him from our office.

"We the People" did with the ballot box what congress lacked the courage and integrity to do themselves.

Trump daily misled the nation on one thing or another, attacked our institutions, ran down dissenters, violated our laws, and, all this, seemingly with impunity, even as we gave lip service to the false bromide, "no man is above the law."

The conclusion was obvious that we had a man occupying the West Wing who acted as a "Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant .. " Indeed, he tried to overthrow the government to continue as President as if he won the presidential election he lost.

As we found King George, Trump was "unfit to be the Ruler of a free people?"

In our declaration of Independence, it was well said that "[A]ll experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

We have work yet to do.

We must secure the Republic against the persistent challenge by Republican autocrats, the leaders in the party who seek to undermine our democracy and to rule by suppressing the vote and by lying to our citizens.

Our Declaration of Independence plainly set forth our mission - to oppose any usurpation of our hard won democracy, and that meant most particularly to defend against any effort from within to embrace a despotic or monarchical government.

Whether by indictment, resignation or impeachment, we have not yet made an accounting for the misconduct that put our Republic at grave risk.

This needed accounting is of course derived from the language of law and constitutional obligation.

The public demands an accounting but this current Congress and Justice Department sanctions no one.

Our character as a nation, our cultural DNA, is of rugged independence, as lovers of freedom, with a can-do spirit, and an extended hand to help others on a journey, still underway, to secure for every person the rights that we declared paramount, the rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

These rights are at risk.

We could not have done better to start this journey of restoration than to elect Joe Biden.

But we still have work to do - to hold accountable those persons who would overthrow our government – and remain the enemy within – apparently way "above the law."