According to the declaration what should government be based on

The Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Independence. The Mayflower Compact. Preamble to the Constitution. The Ten Commandments. Notify Me. Pay Online. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:.

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:.

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. They are symbols of the liberty that allows us to achieve success and of the equality that ensures that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.

In other words, the fundamental freedoms of the American people were alluded to in the Declaration of Independence, implicit in the Constitution, and enumerated in the Bill of Rights. When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in , it was far from clear that the delegates would pass a resolution to separate from Great Britain. To persuade them, someone needed to articulate why the Americans were breaking away. Although Jefferson disputed his account, John Adams later recalled that he had persuaded Jefferson to write the draft because Jefferson had the fewest enemies in Congress and was the best writer.

Jefferson would have gotten the job anyway—he was elected chair of the committee. Jefferson had 17 days to produce the document and reportedly wrote a draft in a day or two. The Declaration of Independence has three parts. It has a preamble, which later became the most famous part of the document but at the time was largely ignored. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence contains the entire theory of American government in a single, inspiring passage:. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

When Jefferson wrote the preamble, it was largely an afterthought. Why is it so important today? It captured perfectly the essence of the ideals that would eventually define the United States. How could Jefferson write this at a time that he and other Founders who signed the Declaration owned slaves? The document was an expression of an ideal. In his personal conduct, Jefferson violated it.

At the Seneca Falls Convention in , when supporters of gaining greater rights for women met, they, too, used the Declaration of Independence as a guide for drafting their Declaration of Sentiments.

Their efforts to achieve equal suffrage culminated in in the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. And during the civil rights movement in the s, Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Like the other Founders, he was steeped in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, in philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Francis Hutcheson, and Montesquieu.

All of them believed that people have certain unalienable and inherent rights that come from God, not government, or come simply from being human. They also believed that when people form governments, they give those governments control over certain natural rights to ensure the safety and security of other rights.

They were a deeply religious people who were very familiar with the idea of universal human equality from the teachings of Christianity and from English republicanism. The colonists also believed strongly that the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed and that the governed have a right to revolution when government betrays its trust. Again, these ideas came from Locke and English republicanism.

In reexamining it today, we realize that this American Creed continues its role in providing cohesive force to a society not only divided by conflicting positions on controversial issues, but also united in seeking the fulfillment of its founding ideals.

This means that no one is legitimately the ruler of others by birth and no one is by birth the subject of a ruler. The other is that human equality goes deeper than just political equality. In this sense, all people are considered of equal value and worth, or equal in the eyes of God.

All are created moral equals. In fact Jefferson intended both of these senses of natural equality. Late in life he stated that in composing the Declaration he was not stating original principles or ideas of his own. History of the idea of political equality. Ideas of natural political equality were developed in seventeenth-century England and exported to its colonies across the North Atlantic. All of these sources speak of natural human political equality flowing from their natural equality by birth.

History of the idea of moral equality. The idea of the moral equality of human beings has more ancient origins. The equality and universal fraternity of humanity was a doctrine of the Stoic philosophers of the third century BC. These ideas were taken up and spread by Christianity, which held that each person has an immortal soul and that each person is equal in the sight of God.

Equality and the American mind. In colonial America, where Christianity was already deeply established, the Great Awakening, a religious revival movement that swept the colonies from the s to the s a Second Great Awakening would take place in the nineteenth century , helped spread the idea of universal moral human equality, including equality among social classes.

By the eve of the Revolution, universal human equality was a common American idea. Inalienable rights are rights that we are unable to give up, even if we want to. According to the concept of inalienable rights found in the Declaration of Independence, liberty is such a right. That means that if we signed a contract to be a slave, we would not have an obligation to keep it; and despite the contract, no one would have a right to our services.

Having rights that are inalienable does not mean they cannot be attacked by our being arbitrarily killed, imprisoned, or otherwise oppressed. It means that such acts are not morally justified and that we have a ground for moral complaint. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Without them we lose our humanity. With no inherent right to life and liberty, we would be in the same position as ordinary animals such as cattle or sheep. Human beings are different: our right not to be treated like an animal is part of our very nature that we are powerless to change. We are unable to change our nature, and so we are unable to rid ourselves of certain of our essential qualities, such as the capacity to make moral choices.

To answer this, we should bear in mind that in writing the Declaration, Jefferson said he was not attempting to put forth an original philosophy of his own. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness, so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger [the] ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general…the more are we free from [obedience to an immediate impulse for some pleasure].

Every day we make numerous choices in deciding what course of action will add to our well-being—what will make us happy. Making these choices is the pursuit of happiness. The results of our choices are not all equal: we soon discover that choosing some pleasures, especially following momentary impulses, leads not to happiness but to pain.

But if we use our faculty of foresight, recalling past experience, we learn to postpone immediate gratification and see what choices are really in our interest. Thus, learning self-control based on experience is essential to happiness. Pursuing happiness as an inalienable right. Accordingly, our right to make these choices is inalienable, and, unless our actions attack the rights of others, it is wrong for government to interfere.

Private happiness, public happiness, and moral goodness. Locke, Jefferson, and others learned from ancient philosophers, especially Aristotle, that these choices have ethical or moral dimensions: those without moral virtue cannot be happy. From the Preamble to the U. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice , insure domestic tranquility , provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare , and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Justice refers generally to fairness. The meaning of justice has been contested for more than 2, years of human history and remains contested today.