The Declaration Then And Now
The year was sixteen hundred and eighty-nine and a man by the name of John Locke wrote Second Treatise on Government (Zinn 73). In it, Locke wrote that in a natural state everyone, all people, are born free and equal, and possess certain rights. He said that these "natural rights" were life, liberty, and property. He also said that the evildoers who conspired to deprive others of their life, liberty, or property ruined the good life of the state of nature (Locke). The only way to protect these rights is by joining together to form governments. The power of government, then, stems from the consent of the governed, which entrust the government with responsibility for protecting their lives, liberty, and possessions. Should the government fail in their task, the people have the right to revolt and institute a new government.>From this, Americans drew one of the most important concepts. In the Declaration of Independence, the founders used Locke's theory to justify their independence from Great Britain. Americans were justified in revolting against the King, the founders declared, because the King deprived them of their rights to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". Thomas Jefferson substitute
Liberty is another word for freedom. You feel like you have achieved it when you move out of your parents' house, and strike out on your own. Everyone has some sense of freedom, but only to some extent. What did Jefferson mean when he wrote liberty? Did you mean complete liberty? In reality, or at least in our reality we cannot have complete liberty. We will always have limitations on how far our freedom goes. In Jordan's essay Freedom Time, she writes about a situation in which she was staying with a friend and one morning during breakfast, a group outside her friends' house began to picket. They held signs speaking out against abortion. When Jordan went outside to get the story she met a man by the name of David Terpstra. Jordan seemed to be disturbed by what Terpstra told her. "As I listened to David Terpstra, a good-looking white man in his twenties, it occurred to me that he was the kind of person who might have shot and killed Dr. Gunn. Certainly he would see no reason ! Wiretap Library. 4 December 2000 DiversityInc.Com. 4 December 2000 Jordan, June. "Freedom Time." Rereading America:Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and DiversityInc.Com. 4 December 2000 The "pursuit of Happiness", it is a nice thought, but to be honest to pursue happiness is hard work. It is not any easy task. Pursuing happiness can take up to thirty years to achieve. But then again, happiness can be something that you find inside yourself. All in all Jefferson and his friends wrote a pretty good declaration. They got their point across, they wanted their freedom, and they achieved their goal. Our society has changed a lot over the last two hundred years so it is hard for a document written so long ago to pertain to who we have become today. I think on some level we have obtained some kind of equality, mayb
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Approximate Word count = 1333
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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