The first semester of my third year in college, I was dragged, kicking and screaming, to the University of Nottingham, Oxbridge on the Trent. It was Nottingham Forest that drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank them.
Part of the orientation was a political science professor telling up about the British government. After the obligatory fifteen minutes of insults ("Do you have newspapers in America?" Yes, but the tabloids are celebrity gossip, not the newspaper of record, without a page three he would recognize), he got around to something important. Who rules?
Undoubtedly, he thought we would say the queen, or perhaps the king. Perhaps he had not be told that we were in a traditional Politics, Philosophy, and Economics program. Not all of us made it through.
We knew the answer. We knew that, on official letters, the monarch might be referred to as "dread sovereign."
Who rules the United States? Who is the dread sovereign?
The People. The People rule. The People are sovereign.
If you want to know what American Exceptionalism is, that is a big part of it. Vide Rand.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal.
Of course, July 1 was Canada Day. We celebrated with a thorough throttling of Toronto FC.
Enjoy your Independence Day, and be careful with those explosives you carry around.