Taking for Granted

I just had to post this. It's a beautiful document that almost everyone I know in the United States seems to take for granted. Without this little piece of history, life in the US as we know it now would not exist.

My thoughts on this subject started with my observation:

The Declaration of Independence declares "the right to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS." And here we are, prisoners of our homework, forgetting what "life" means, and pursuing the answer to the previously mentioned homework and the elusive understanding of our professors' random lecturing.

But it's a lot more than that. A lot more than that. I already wrote down a lot of my thoughts on the matter, but I thought I would summarize here.
The beginning of this Nation wasn't easy. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence knew that they were taking their lives into their own hands, and that if the formation of the United States of America were to fail they would all be hung for treason. Despite the long odds and definite doom upon failure, they still did it anyway. They took their lives into their own hands and told England exactly how they felt, listing their reasons and their attempts at resolving the matter before going to war. They wrote down exactly what they believed, and then they lived by it. You can't help but admire that.
My favorite line is at the very end:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

They knew what they were doing, and they pledged everything they held important in their lives in an effort to fight for their beliefs. Where has this spirit gone? I certainly haven't seen it anywhere lately.
Where is the Soul of America?