WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is urging Americans on the Fourth of July to live up to the words of the Declaration of Independence by securing liberty and opportunity for their own children as well as for future generations.

In his weekly radio and online address, Obama commemorates the Fourth of July by looking back at the day in 1776 that a small band of patriots declared those in the American colonies "a people created equal" — free to think and worship and live as they please.

Obama says their declaration was "heard around the world."

Obama says few bet that the Americans would win the revolution that followed. He calls it the first of many times the doubters of America were proven wrong.