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Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Freedom, Equality, and the Declaration

 You and the government: the funding freeze

The lawsuit

And now, the administration just rescinded it.

For Monday, read:

Also read Strunk and White before the next assignment.  

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."


Did Jefferson mean “men” as gender?

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold...

Created equal

Lincoln's comments at Galesburg
I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject he used the strong language that “he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just;” and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.

Douglass [note spelling] on the Declaration and Constitution. 


That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ...

What is a right?
  • Natural or human rights
  • Civil rights
  • Political rights

 Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness COMMA!!!
  • Why that order?  (Why the comma?)
  • What is liberty? Tyranny of majority?
  • Why not property?
  • What is happiness?

Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness. The true student of politics, too, is thought to have studied virtue above all things; for he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws.

Why not the word democracy?

    Securing rights
    • That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
    • But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
     [NATIONAL TREASURE]
    •  “evinces a design” (196-197) -- a plan-- CONSPIRACY THEORY!
    The list of grievances and the Constitution

    The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid world.

    Article I addresses these concerns:

    He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. Article I

    He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.  

    He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. [ 

    He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. [  1st, 9th, 10th Amendment]

    Article I, 

    He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. [ 5th Amendment]


     He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. 

    He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

    For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:  

    For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:  

    Article II

    He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. 

    Article III:

    He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

    He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

    Third Amendment

    For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: [ 3rd Amendment]

     For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: [ 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th Amendment]

    Sixth and Seventh Amendments

    For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: [ 6th Amendment]

    Ugh....

    He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.  

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