Thomas
Jefferson Enlightenment
Even
as late as June 1775, Thomas Jefferson said that he would "rather
be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any
nation on earth, or than on no nation." This is a very fancy way
to say it makes no sense for either party to stick to the way that
things are, given the current conditions and our feelings towards each
other the only sensible thing to do is to break apart. He is saying
that governments exist because of the people that they represent and
that England has failed the people of the United States and is not
acting in their best interests and because of this the people of the
United States have the right to change their government.The
unalienable rights guaranteed to all men from the declaration of
independence include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In an
effort to ensure that these rights remain in the hands of the people
the people themselves can create a government to protect these rights.
Jefferson believed when the government begins to act in a way that the
rights of people are threatened or in some way diminished the people
have the right to change their government, to remove the current
government and replace it with a new version that will protect their
unalienable rights. The words life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness can include almost all aspects of American life at the time.
What Jefferson is saying is that we will not live our lives on the
whim of the King we can’t even see or touch. The aristocracy and
Kings of Europe controlled every aspect of the people that they ruled
and Jefferson was saying that Americans have the right to create and
live their own life with their own form of government.
It is said (in the second paragraph) that “ deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed” meaning that the
government get their power from the “consent” or permission “of
the governed” who is all the people in america.
a. Without the
consent of the people King George III imposed taxes
b. Without
letting our legislatures know what he was doing, King George III kept
a standing army secretly even though we were in a time of peace
c. King George
III cut off all communication with parts of the world along with trade
with those places
d. King George
III deprived us in many cases from a true trial with a jury
e.He has
endangered our seas, hurt our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed
so many lives of our people
To get away
from the king the people decided that they would need “Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed,” They also thought that “That whenever any Form
of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of
the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness”and that it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another in
order to have a better government than when they were ruled by the
king.
a.levy war: to be able to start/ to begin a war
b.conclude
peace: to bring about the final agreement/ settlement of peace
c.contract
alliances: to be able to have law enforced agreement allowing you to
aly/have alliances
d.establish
commerce: to be able establish trades with other countries
e.and do all
other acts that other independent states may do I think the colonists were justified in declaring independence from
Great Britain because the people seemed to have a lot of conflict with
how King George dealt with the decisions he had to make. He did not
take into account how the people thought of the situations and just
did what was best for him at the time. Without asking the people he
cut of trade with other places around the world and imposed taxes and
I think this angered the people because they want to have a say
in what is going on around them.I
think that the colonist were justified to declare independence from
great Britain because of all of the choices the king made either not
including the peoples opinions or even suppressing them and taking
away their unestablished rights. For example King George lll has
plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed
the lives of our people and has For imposing taxes on us without our
Consent. The
automatic response would be yes United States was justified in
declaring independence from Great Britain. It almost sounds
un-American not to agree. I remember seeing a documentary that told
Britain’s side of the story. The United Kingdom was in debt when the
revolution came around and England believed that a huge percentage of
the debt came from protecting the United States and fighting wars for
them. The Americans tax argument went something like this: no taxation
without representation. The documentary I saw said that Americans had
the lowest tax rate of anyone in England including the UK’s own
people living there. Only about one third of Americans living in the
colonies were pro-revolution. So many people were against the war in
fact that over 100,000 people moved to Canada during or very near the
end of the war. You will never find 100% support for war and I’d was
not there and had no real dog in the race. I imagine most wars are
just like this, justified for some and a political or economic
opportunity for others.I
feel that they had the right to start the declaration of independence
because the
people should have the right to start their own government.The
first 10 amendments to the Constitution have a very different tone
than the Declaration of Independence. The Bill of Rights lacks any
sort of emotion or passion. It is instead a complex set of guidelines
to model the new government. It is more like an operators manual for
governmental daily use. The amendments are very straightforward
guidelines including freedom of speech and press, the right to bear
arms, no quartered soldiers in peace time, the right not to be
searched without giving consent, the right not to incriminate
yourself, the right to a speedy trial, double jeopardy, no excessive
bail or unusual punishment, the right to be free to the extent that
you do not infringe on another’s freedom, and powers not given to
the U.S. Constitution or prohibited by the state are reserved to the
states or people. These rules are listed and very clear with no
philosophy attached. On the other hand the Declaration of Independence
is a passionate cry of abuse and the desire for emancipation for the
colonists driven by raw emotion over a chain of events that left them
desperate to break away from Great Britain. Declaration of
Independence outlines the philosophy why we want to break away and the
Bill of Rights is a list of rules that we will follow once we do.
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