The Thirteen Colonies starting a war with the British was like Jesse Eisenberg entering the UFC ring—kind of a bad idea, but awesome (go scrappy guy!). 

The colonies had no navy, no standing army, no means of buying guns, and you could count the number of cannons they owned on one hand. The British, on the other hand, were so warlike that their corporations employed over 50,000 troops, so you can imagine what their government could do.

Awesome to watch, but it didn't bode well for the colonists.

So, why did Britain's "child" talk back? Well, once Parliament started taxing any and every import in the colonies, the colonists started to get a wee bit irritated. Their response to this irritation started out fairly tame with a few boycotts, but grew into actions that were much more sinister. You know, like tarring, feathering, and publicly humiliating tax collectors.

Plus, the "parents" and the "children" were actually the same age, so that made it awkward. And their "parents" included British Parliament and King George III, and while they lived on British soil (technically speaking), they lived 3,000 miles away from England proper. That made it harder for the "parents" to keep control over the American colonists. 

However, we sometimes assume that Americans seemed to have been destined to declare independence, but in reality, most colonists had shared a sense of British identity throughout the first 150 years of settlement, and breaking with the only state authority that many of them had ever known was a difficult decision to make, let alone execute.

So, the fact of American independence was truly revolutionary, and the Thirteen Colonies really needed someone to believe in them, get in their corner, and pump them up into fighting shape, montage-style. But no one would help them if they were still legally part of Britain. To get friends, the colonists needed to make a Declaration of Independence.

But it couldn't just be a basic declaration. While the Founders were probably tempted to make a one-sentence statement reading, "We're our own bosses now, suckas!," they had to make a declaration that would convince both the "Undecideds"—the colonists who weren't sure if independence was the best plan—within their borders, and the European nations overseas, that they were doing the right thing.

To do this, Thomas Jefferson wrote a declaration that justified independence in terms of the philosophical ideals of liberty and rights guaranteed to everyone. The ideas he used were based on not only English legal traditions—cough, Magna Carta, cough—but also the cutting-edge ideas of the French Enlightenment.

The idea of the Declaration was to make it known that the colonies had good reasons for rebelling, reasons that any freedom-loving European could understand. They weren't just power-hungry war mongers who were tired of paying taxes—their motivations were philosophical, yo. 

And on July 4th, 1776, the members of the Continental Congress approved the final draft of the Declaration of Independence and sent it to be gift wrapped and mailed to Parliament. Thanks to those members of Congress, we now spend July 4th of each year watching fireworks and eating watermelon in their honor.

Many teachers, parents, and politicians will tell you that it's imperative to learn about the ideas and the people who framed American independence. It's where we as a nation come from. If you're an immigrant, or come from a family of immigrants, then this is supposed to help you understand what this country is all about and why it's so great.

Sure, solid points.

But the Founding Fathers thought about freedom and rights differently than we do today. For most 18th-century thinkers, the only people who actually had natural rights were adult men who were white, Christian, and owned property. So, maybe not so natural after all. These were the only sorts of people Founding Father Benjamin Franklin thought capable of freedom. (Et tu, Benny?)

So, on the one hand, studying the history of the American Revolution can provide us with an enhanced understanding of a truly remarkable generation and the unprecedented battle they waged for self-determination and liberty. But on the other hand, this same history can also teach us about some of the central contradictions at the heart of this nation's history—cough, slavery, cough—and some of the paradoxes that abounded in the republican ideology.

And yet, politicians, pundits, and others continue not only to worship the founding generation as though they were infallible, but they keep claiming to know what the Founding Fathers would think or say on all matter of current events.

This is a frequently employed "political football," so to speak. If Ben Franklin or John Adams would've disapproved of increased immigration quotas—contemporary politicians might argue—then we must follow suit. Yet even if we had cryogenically frozen Thomas Jefferson and could bring him back to life today, who's to say that his opinion on matters like constitutional law or modern political subjects should direct our thinking on such 21st-century matters?

There's a sort of bizarre time-zone effect to these debates. Our reverent attitude toward the founding generation often loses sight of the point that they would be entirely unprepared to deal with a radically different historical setting hundreds of years later. 

Not only that, but they really didn't know what they were doing in their own time. They didn't have the benefit of hindsight and they had no idea that this experiment in republican government would work. Sorry, Founding Fathers. Just tellin' it like it is.

See, it almost didn't work out, as you'll find out when you learn more about the choppy history under our first government (guided by the Articles of Confederation). They gave it their best shot and they kept trying.

There's no question that these were exceptionally bright people, and that their opinions and thoughts are to be valued by all patriotic Americans. At the same time, such patriotic Americans would do well to remember that the founding of this nation was not so much a perfectly executed display of omniscience as it was a noble goal that managed to gain military victory—with the critical aid of the French—and then enough stability to overcome the hardships that lay in wait.

Our Founding Fathers were well read and they had admirable hopes and dreams. But they were human beings, flawed and fallible, with their own sets of contradictions and shortcomings. This isn't so much a reason to revere them any less, as it is a testament to the fact that what they managed to accomplish should be all the more noteworthy, given that they were human, like the rest of us.