July 4th is American “Independence Day.” So it’s fitting to use this opportunity to find out a bit more about how Americans think.

It has been observed: “The Battleground Poll is the most unbiased of all polls. It is a collaboration of the Tarrance Group, a Republican polling organization, and Lake Research Partners, a Democrat polling organization. This almost unique effort at having truly fair polls has been around since 1991, and it has proven exceeding accurate in predicting elections.”

The most recent Battleground Poll found that presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have exactly the same “positive” and “negative” impressions among likely American voters (see pages Q18 and Q19 of the graphic report). They are both rated roughly 55% positive and 40% negative with 5% undecided. Obama’s negative impression has doubled since early 2007, while McCain’s has increased by only 20%.

Another fascinating fact revealed by the poll is that 62% of Americans view themselves as “very” or “somewhat” conservative while only 34% self-identify as “very” or “somewhat” liberal (see page 18 of the text report). That’s right: Nearly twice as many Americans see themselves as being on the conservative side of government issues as see themselves as being on the liberal side.

It’s rather disturbing, then, to see the New York Times report that a majority of American university department professorial positions are staffed by liberals, with “moderates” taking up most of the others and conservatives, other than in business schools, relegated to a tiny oppressed minority.

It’s also been determined that American journalists are five times more likely to be liberal than conservative.

But given those facts, it’s easy to see how a public hysteria might be whipped up against conservative Americans by liberals, using their power in the media in the classroom, where clearly an affirmative action program is needed to offset a tragic imbalance of diversity and tolerance.

Conservatives should not lose hope that they can win those battles. On July 4, 1776, a ragtag group of American colonists stood up to the world’s only superpower and demanded the right to live in freedom. For the next six years, they risked their lives as one, spilling their blood on battlefield after battlefield, losing over and over again, determined in the words of the license plates on all cars from the State of New Hampshire, whose ratification of the U.S. Constitution made us a country, to “live free or die.”

Those brave men and women set an example for all the world to follow. They showed that no matter how overwhelming the odds might seem, those who are determined to struggle for liberty can carry the day. When the apparently mighty edifice of the USSR toppled and fell, the world was reminded not only of this fact, but also that it takes more than the collapse of dictatorship to earn freedom, it takes a concerted effort of all the nation’s people to preserve what has been won. So far, the people of Russia have proven unwilling to put forth that effort, and the result is that the average Russian man doesn’t live to see his 60th year or earn as much as $5/hour for his labor.

I hope that one day the people of Russia will recognize Thomas Jefferson’s self-evident truths and stand together as one to fight for them, as Americans have been proudly doing for more than two centuries now, under the same constitution and form of government. In that time, the Russian state has collapsed four times. First the monarchy fell, then the democracy founded by Alexander Kerensky, then Soviet dictatorship which replaced that collapsed, and then the democracy founded by Boris Yeltsin that came after it soon gave way to the neo-Soviet dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. After all that dicatorship, Russia doesn’t rank in the top 100 countries of the world for male adult lifespan.

Happy Independence Day!