Nor did the all the abolitionists and early women’s rights advocates themselves necessarily believe in universal human equality. Nor did they mean it with regard to Native Americans being driven from their ancestral lands. Nor did it apply to men, women and children who were slaves, including of some of the very signers. Clearly, they didn’t mean “all men and women are created equal,” a formulation that would come to the fore with the Declaration of Sentiments drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. That’s because in saying “all men are created equal,” Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence both meant it and did not mean it.
#Life liberty pursuit of happiness constitution free
Yet the idea of these rights was so powerful and so liberating that it became not only a global beacon against oppression, but also the means by which Americans began to free themselves from the constraints of the times in which it arose. To most of them, the idea that government should be “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as Lincoln described it 87 years later, had never occurred. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” that is: Before the Declaration, ideas were brewing along the lines of the “unalienable rights” of all human beings, but the political world was the sport of kings and barons, chieftains and the strong. They should govern themselves as equals and be free to pursue happiness as they see it, without fear of capricious force under color of law. Government is supposed to protect people’s lives and liberty. George Floyd had a right not to be slain by a police officer. And whether they are aware of it historically or not, they mostly rely on claims introduced into the political world in the American Declaration of Independence. Yet current conditions make its message all the more timely.ĭemonstrators demand justice and rail against past and present injustice. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo chartered his commission well before the tough six months America has just been going through, from pandemic to lockdown to protests, some of them violent. The report of the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, in circulation as of last week, is perhaps the exception that proves the rule: a lively and serious inquiry into the basic ideas that animated the founding of the United States and provided impetus to the global pursuit of human rights. Reports by government commissions aren’t generally known for their insight into basic questions about the human condition, nor can they typically be read for pleasure.
0 kommentar(er)
