What's the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and slavery?
About this video
The speaker explains the founders' idea of natural justice: we are all equal and have authority over our own lives, but people do not always follow the natural moral law. Government exists to secure our rights, and when it becomes tyrannical through a long train of abuses, people have a natural right to overthrow it and create a new government by consent. That is what the Declaration of Independence did, leading to the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution.
You'll be able to
- explain why, according to the founders, people create government.
- describe the natural right to revolution and when the Declaration says it applies.
- trace the path from the Declaration to the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.
Key words
- Natural justice
- The idea that there is a moral law, based on human nature, that tells us how we should treat one another.
- Natural moral law
- Rules of right and wrong that exist by nature, not because a government wrote them.
- Tyrannical
- Using power cruelly or unjustly, especially for the rulers' own good.
- Right to revolution
- The idea that people may overthrow a government that has become tyrannical.
- Consent
- Agreement of the people, which gives a government its rightful authority.
Transcript
The founders start from this idea of Natural Justice. We're all equal, we all have authority over our own lives, yet we're not all perfectly just. I have three kids, they're 10, nine, and five, and I can attest that we're not all just by nature. We're all selfish by nature and we take things that are not ours. Even though there's a natural moral law, we don't all follow it.
The reason we create government is to enforce justice, to enforce the natural moral law, to keep us from violating one another's rights, to secure our rights so we can live together in peace and prosperity. But sometimes, unfortunately, those who we grant power to help us secure our rights, to pursue the common good, use it for their own good. To dissipate further in the Declaration, if there's a long train of abuses and government becomes tyrannical, the founders argument, the argument of the Declaration of Independence, the argument of natural justice is when government becomes tyrannical, we can overthrow it and then they institute a new government. That, in fact, is what the founders are doing with the Declaration of Independence. They're saying this
government, the king of England, has become tyrannical. These are the reasons why we believe this government is tyrannical. We're making an argument that invoking our natural right to revolution is justified in this case. We are throwing off this government, and then we will institute a new government to protect our rights to safety and happiness on principles of justice, and we'll do that via consent. That first becomes the Articles of Confederation, and then the new federal Constitution, which we still live under today.
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