Not too long ago, Anji and I, along with our children, stood in Independence Hall at 5th and Chestnut. That that was one of the most hallowed houses I have ever been in for that was the place where, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

For both Anji and I, they are more than just our Founding fathers, two of them are our grandfathers. I am descended from Benjamin Harrison of the Virginia delegation and Anji is descended from Samuel Adams of the Massachusetts delegation.

There, in those small halls, I felt a sense of great humility for those great founders who sat in those chairs – founders such as our grandfathers and George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who ascribed their names and pledged their sacred honor to that inspired document that begins:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. “

It was also in that room, that again our great founders ascribed their names to that inspired document that begins, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

For these freedoms countless numbers have lived, served and died. Next to life itself, the ability to choose how to live that life is the greatest of all of God’s gifts. I love our country and proclaim, along with the Prophet leader Moroni of old, that the spirit of God is the Spirit of Freedom. It is therefore a part of our religion to preserve and promote that freedom.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And for you and I, let this day refresh our recollections of these rights, and stir within us, an undiminished devotion to them.