Tomorrow is our nation's 235th birthday. Time to fire up the grills, tap the kegs, raise the flag and dress up for the parades.

America has earned the right to a celebration if for no other reason than we are living proof that the naysayers who predicted that our ideology would fail were wrong. We have lived and thrived and prospered in a free society.

No king or dictator or overseas tyrant has any hold on us and, although it took 15 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the passage of the Bill of Rights, we still live by and honor those rights.

Nonetheless, lift a rock or two and you will find some who would change the Declaration from by and for the people to by and for the government. These un-Americans feel our Constitution has outlived its need or usefulness. Their contention is that it is too simplistic and what worked in a tiny little nation is now outmoded in this complex civilization. We must be eternally -vigilant to thwart these people.

Probably the first move in that direction is to reread the Declaration of Independence and reread the Constitution. Most of us have so long been exposed to these documents that we think we have them memorized, but it pays before you go into battle to know your strengths. And these documents are as strong as any ever written.

They were conceived and worried over by a tiny group of patriots who had never heard of computers or Internets or other electronic miracles, yet they knew well the meaning of freedom. Their goal was to see that it came to be for a new nation. They succeeded.

Reading the Declaration and the Constitution does not take long. Each is fairly short, but each says what it means, unlike too many political treatises of today.

Note, as you read the Constitution, that it is not a one-shot fixed-in-concrete piece of writing. It is a living document that has evolved through the years to encompass our changing mores. It has been amended 27 times - the last time in 1992. Whenever something seems wrong, we can make it right. And we have done so by eliminating -discrimination in voting rights due to age or gender or race and by repealing what did not work.

These amendments are just that: changes to the most important document in our laws. Any thought of simply dumping our Constitution is plain out-and-out treason.

All presidents take an oath to protect the Constitution, yet more than a few have tried to make end runs around it, thereby violating their oaths. It therefore behooves us to constantly remind the person in the Oval Office that no president is above the law, especially the law of our Constitution.

Executive orders and the appointment of czars not subject to congressional approval are not acceptable substitutes for our Constitution. There is a reason the Constitution gave us three branches of government - to protect us with a system of checks and balances. I believe that rereading the Constitution can make us better citizens, even if we don't quite become experts in constitutional law. We need not -analyze it. That's what a Supreme Court is for.

As for that beloved Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers spoke for all Americans as they stated in the last paragraph: "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."

We have freedom because they and those who followed them meant those words and did, in fact, offer up their lives to give us that freedom.

So, when we lean back on the grass and gaze upward at the celebratory rocket's red glare, let us give thanks to those farsighted men who reached for their quills and signed the documents that gave us a chance to say, "Happy Birthday, America!"

Allan Jefferys, a former New York theater critic and newsman, lives in Pinehurst. Contact him at oldjeff@nc.rr.com.