The Declaration: Justice For ALL

Quote of the week:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

-Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence.

We all have read this quote before. We hear it in social studies and literature class. Most of us have probably heard our parents talk about it at some point. We have heard it so many times before that sometimes we tend to take it for granted that this is the way things are, or should be. However, the truth is that things are not always just. We often times see injustices happening all around us. We say the Pledge of Allegiance every single day, and talk about a nation with "Liberty and justice for all".  However, often times we don't take into realization how we should behave under such a nation.

Image source

The truth is that most of us would probably agree that our nation is not 100 percent the way our founding fathers planned it out to be. Yes, our beautiful America is not perfect. However, I would argue that it doesn't matter.

When Thomas Jefferson (inspired by Lockean ideas) stated that we are all entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it was a bold move. Back then, in a world where an absolute king was the most powerful man in the whole world, it was almost unbelievable that such a thing could ever be possible. What we often don't think about when we read this quote is that it did not just set a bold foundation for what our government should be. It did so much more than that. John Locke, and in turn Thomas Jefferson, raised our expectations of how we should be treated and how we should treat one another.

Image source

With this quote, we are not simply stating that we have the right to be happy. We are saying that we have to fight for our happiness. That no matter what government we are in, it is our right and responsibility to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After all, the quote says "all men" not just the people of the United States, but all people. Therefore, the importance of this quote is that it tells us that we have rights and that we should let no government tell us otherwise.

It doesn't matter that right now our government is not perfect, and that we see injustices every once in a while, because so long as we still hold the truths of equality and liberty to be self evident, and so long as we believe that we are entitled to happiness, we will fight for it. So long as we follow the ideals that Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers set for us long ago, liberty will prevail in all men. When it doesn't, we will stand up. Thanks to our expectations towards our nation and society, we will fight to have the unalienable rights that most of us now take for granted.

Furthermore, we have seen all throughout our nation's history that the ideals of liberty have prevailed against the face of injustice. We have seen it with the fight for the rights of African Americans. We have seen it with the previous injustices towards women, and we will keep seeing it today and always. Anytime there is an injustice, people will eventually change the way things happen.

We will see that it is the right of the people to change their government when their rights are infringed. 

We will see that the power to ensure our rights does not lie solely in the government.

We will see, and we have seen, that it is ultimately people like you and me who ensure that the nation that we live in is a just nation.

Most importantly, we will see that so long as the people keep fighting, and so long as we do not give up, these truths will always be self evident. All men are created with the opportunity to be the change that they want to see in the world.

All men, and women, are created equal, because they all have the power to shape the world around them to be the world that they expect.

This is the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, the fact that he gave us a high expectation towards what we should strive to create. Whether it is in the United States, or anywhere else in the world, today, we all believe in justice, and we all believe in the hope for a government in which all men, and women, have the right to be happy, and this will never change. If it does, hopefully it will be for better, and not for worse.

Today, we still believe in the same values that are the ultimate foundation for our country. These unalienable rights are still valued in our society and we'll keep valuing them so long as the United States still exists. I think the Declaration's values are supposed to serve as a guideline for what our nation is supposed to be, and that unless we want to change the foundation for our government, we cannot change or revise the Declaration of Independence. Unlike the constitution, it creates for us a guideline of what our country is supposed to be.