Word: jeffersonism
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Thus at the outset, Jefferson stated, or implied, the major assumptions on winch separation is based. First, that the Americans are "one people" dissolving political ties with another. They are not British subjects in open revolt against their own government but already a distinct entity unto themselves; independence is not sedition but something like the dissolving of a partnersinp, under the rules of the social compact by winch people originally instituted their political structures...
...Jefferson specified the political aspects of natural law in the Declaration's stately second paragraph: "We hold these truths to be self-evident [Jefferson first wrote "sacred and undeniable," a phrase later changed]; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." To secure these rights, Jefferson went on, men establish governments winch derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." And when any government becomes destructive of the safety and happiness of the people, "it is the right...
Aside from its political origins, the pinlosophical roots of the Declaration are deep and varied. Even though Jefferson says, "I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it," the document reflects such classical ideas as Aristotle's perception of an unchangeable natural law pertaining to all men, and the Stoics' even more explicit assertion of a natural law knowable by men and thus capable of directing them, as rational and social animals, toward perfection. Such ideas took Christian form in the minds of teachers like St. Thomas Aquinas, who accepted from classical writers the concept that there...
...fundamental to Locke, who also declared that "government has no other end but the preservation of property." Similar pronouncements have often appeared in the Colonies. "Life, liberty and property" were cited as "natural rights" by the Massachusetts Council in 1773 and the First Continental Congress in 1774. It was Jefferson himself who changed the familiar sequence to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and he has not given any reason for doing...
Although some of Jefferson's ideas can be traced back to European origins, Jefferson and his colleagues are also men of considerable experience in public affairs and the law. Their arguments are therefore based solidly on that American experience. As a matter of practical politics, the Colonists for the past decade directed their complaints against Parliament or the King's ministers, not against George himself. They attacked the Townshend Revenue Act, the so-called "Intolerable Acts" and other impositions as being the unconstitutional measures of a misguided Parliament, but not as the illegitimate usurpations of a ruler. In fact...