Americans will celebrate today across the country -- and anywhere else where there are Americans -- the 229th anniversary of the declaration of our country's independence.

Nothing should be allowed to spoil the joy of that anniversary. The Fourth of July is least of all a day for moping over what is wrong. All Americans and everyone else who lives in this country have the right to gaze on its beauty and watch the fireworks with the eyes of the young and the old, who have seen many such Fourths of July, in peace and at war.

At the same time, no one has the right to be free of the duty to reflect today -- briefly, because it is a holiday after all -- on points where America is not living up to its promise. At our worst we are smug. At our best we ask what we can do to make our country better, and then do it.

This town got an ugly glance at one thing wrong with America last week when a sick and homeless man, his poor wife and their dog met tragedy near a truck weigh station where they had been sleeping off Interstate 79 in Cranberry. We can talk incessantly about safety nets, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and how this country is supposed to pay for its wars and still provide its citizens social services. The long and short of it is these two people had no work, no roof over their heads and not enough to eat. In the course of moving from one nightly refuge to another, the woman and the dog ended up dead -- victims of separate hit-and-run incidents along the darkness of the interstate. Surely it didn't have to be.

On a lighter note, perhaps more appropriate to the Fourth, the "229" of this anniversary sounds suspiciously like the price these days of a gallon of gas. The Pirates couldn't lose that many games, could they? (It would take a few seasons.)

The House of Representatives gave themselves another pay rise last week, but that was only 1.9 percent (not 229 percent), bringing their salaries up to $165,200. We are sure they deserve every borrowed penny of it -- of course they do.

On the dark side, 229 is also less than three months of American deaths in Iraq at the current rate. And U.S. losses in Afghanistan are rising again, when that fight should have been over by now.

In any case, Happy Fourth of July. Stop today and smell the hot dogs. But also be prepared tomorrow to go back to the fray. America is very much a work in progress. That progress needs to be measured in less poverty at home and fewer soldiers killed abroad.