The 235th anniversary of this country’s declaration of independence is Monday. Most countries, especially republics and democracies have crashed and burned time and again by now. Ours has not.

People have always slandered others’ patriotism, but over the past few years, controversy has heated up around the meaning of the Constitution and what it means to be an American citizen more than ever before.

Whether you believe that the Constitution was a grant of power to the federal government or a restraint upon centralized power, and whether you believe the meaning of the Constitution is set in stone or changes as new situations arise, you should remember that we are all Americans.

President Barack Hussein Obama is as American as Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Washington. Wishing failure upon one president or his policies is tantamount to wishing failure upon this country. If policies work, they should be supported, whether they be of the 19th-century laissez-faire variety or of the 20th-century Communist Party.

This country’s people declared their independence after chafing against policies dictated by a mother country 3,000 miles away. We declared our independence because we wanted to take matters into our own hands. To allow policymaking to be dictated by ideology instead of what is best for America is foolhardy, and probably one of the last things the Founders and Framers would have done.

President Jefferson’s statement in his inaugural address that “We are all republicans — we are all federalists” rings as true today as it did in 1801. What unifies us all is that we hold America’s best interests, not our own, above all others.