So long as we stick to grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, hauling the kids to the lake or the mountains, and winding up the day watching the fireworks as the Boston Pops plays the "1812" -- written by a subject of the czar to celebrate the defeat of our vital ally the French -- we can usually manage to convince ourselves we still cling to the same values that made July 4, 1776, a date that continues to ring in history.

Great Britain taxed the colonists at far lower rates than Americans tolerate today -- and never dreamed of granting government agents the power to search our private bank records to locate "unreported income," nor to haul away our children to some mandatory, government-run propaganda camp. Nor did the king's ministers ever attempt to stack our juries by disqualifying any juror who refused to swear in advance to leave their conscience outside and enforce the law as the judge explained it to them.

The king's ministers insisted the colonists were represented by Members of Parliament who had never set foot on these shores. Today, of course, our interests are "represented" by one of two millionaire lawyers -- both members of the incumbent Republicrat Party -- between whom we were privileged to "choose" last election day, men who for the most part have lived in mansions and sent their kids to private schools in the wealthy suburbs of the imperial capital for decades.

Yet the colonists did rebel. It's hard to imagine, today, the faith and courage of a few hundred frozen musketmen, setting off across the darkened Delaware, gambling their lives and farms on the chance they could engage and defeat the greatest land army in the history of the known world, armed with only two palpable assets: one irreplaceable man to lead them, and some flimsy newspaper reprints of a parchment declaring: "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, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it. ..."

Do we believe that, still?

Recently, President Clinton's then-Drug Czar, Lee Brown, told me the role of government is to protect people from dangers, such as drugs. I corrected him, saying, "No, the role of government is to protect our liberties."

"We'll just have to disagree on that," the president's appointee said.

The War for American Independence began over unregistered untaxed guns, when British forces attempted to seize arsenals of rifles, powder, and ball from the hands of ill-organized Patriot militias in Lexington and Concord. American civilians shot and killed scores of those government agents as they marched back to Boston. Are those Minutemen still our heroes? Or do we now consider them "dangerous terrorists" and "depraved government-haters"?

In Phoenix last week, an air-conditioner repairman and former military policeman named Chuck Knight was convicted by jurors -- some tearful -- who said they had no choice under the judge's instructions, on a single federal conspiracy count of associating with others who owned automatic rifles on which they had failed to pay the $200 transfer tax. This was after a trial in which defense attorney Ivan Abrams says he was forbidden to bring up the Second Amendment as a defense.

In The Federalist No. 29, James Madison sought to assuage the fears of anti-federalists who worried the proposed new government might someday take away our freedoms:

"If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude," he wrote, "that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."

Any such encroachments by government would "provoke plans of resistance," Mr. Madison continued in The Federalist No. 46, and "an appeal to a trial of force," made possible by "the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."

Were Arizona's Viper Militia readying plans of resistance, as recommended by Mr. Madison? Would the Constitution ever have been ratified at all had Mr. Madison and his fellow federalists warned the citizens that such non-violent preparations would get their weapons seized and land them in jail for decades?