That is the first lesson. Before there was a Constitution, there was a simple statement about who we are and what we are owed as human beings. Good government starts with moral clarity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is not just beautiful language — it is a statement of the “tone at the top” for a free nation. The founders understood that if leadership loses its compass, rules alone will not save the enterprise.
The second lesson is evidence. Auditors do not work on rumors, and free citizens should not either. The Declaration of Independence says, in effect, that facts must be submitted to the world. The colonists listed specific abuses, from taxation without representation to the denial of jury trials and the suspension of local self-government. They were building a record. They did not merely shout that things felt unfair. They made known their work so that others could see the pattern.
The third lesson is control. Auditors call this “management override,” and it is as dangerous in a minor town as it is in a sprawling empire. In public life, danger grows when one person gathers too much power and overrides every safeguard around him. The founders recognized that unchecked authority is not a temporary problem. It becomes a system. Their answer was a framework of checks and balances, with power divided among separate branches so that no single hand could control everything, and each part of government would answer to the others and, ultimately, to the people.
The fourth lesson is consent. Governments do not become righteous because they are old, large, or self-crucial. They are legitimate only when the people consent to their authority. That idea was revolutionary then, and it remains revolutionary now. We the People are not side notes in the American story. We are the source of its legitimacy.
That is why the last paragraph of the Declaration of Independence reads less like a historical flourish than a recommendation section in a hard-fought audit. The founders did not just identify weaknesses in the British system. After weighing the risks and the evidence, they declared that the colonies “are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States,” and they were willing to stake their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on that conclusion. They proposed a new one. They did not pretend their new framework would be perfect, but they believed it would be accountable, adaptable, and rooted in the rights of the people.
As Americans in Utah and throughout the nation gather with family this summer and enjoy the freedoms so many before us protected, it is worth remembering what those signatures meant. They represented more than separation from a king. The Declaration of Independence was not the end of a story — it was the beginning of an ongoing assignment. They represented a commitment to accountable government, individual liberty, and the stubborn idea that power must answer to principle.
That commitment is not inherited automatically. It is renewed every generation. Today, and for all the tomorrows we hope to celebrate under these same fireworks, the recommendation they wrote is now ours to uphold and defend. If we want to keep the blessings the founders secured, we have to keep doing what they did: ask hard questions, demand proof, resist overreach, and remember that government exists to serve the governed.
Tina M. Cannon serves as the auditor of the state of Utah.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, America’s founders did something rare: They audited power.
Their example still matters because the habits that protect liberty are the same habits that protect any institution: accountability, transparency, evidence, and limits on authority. As Utah’s state auditor, I read the Declaration of Independence the way I read a significant report. It is history’s most consequential audit. It is more than a soaring speech.
