Declaration of independence
The Declaration of Independence and The Preamble to the Constitution"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America" This first paragraph of The Constitution was devised to set the standards of which the American government should be based upon after American's separation from Great Britain. Before The Constitution, there was The Declaration of Independence in which the forefathers of the United States asserted America's freedom from the rule of Great Britain. These two documents marked a stepping stone in American history and has helped to shape the current government of the United States. America's forefathers realized that living under Great Britain's rule was not feasible and they felt that they needed to form their own government to cater to the needs of the people living in America and dealing with American issues that were not being solved by Great Britain. The Americans felt that since the Parliament members were not in American, they were in
Because of Britain's location, in reference to America, it almost impossible for the British to call together all of it's citizens and the British had almost no idea of the problems being faced by their counterparts in America. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all wrote books on the theory of social contract. John Locke believes that a social contract is made between citizens who wish to institute a government that prevents people from violating natural law and showing partiality. The Preamble clearly states that citizens of the United States wanted "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote general welfare", referring to the ideas that social contracts are built upon. Locke also believed in the equality of man and stated that there is "no one having more than another" (Barker, 4). Rousseau believed in liberty, one of the central ideas in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He stated that governments should be "directed to no other end but the peace, safety, and public good of the people" (Barker, 76) an ideal stated in the Preamble of the Constitution. Locke also stated that there is "power in the people of providing for their safety anew by a new legislative when their legislators have acted contrary to their trust" (Barker, 131), which is exactly what the writers of the Declaration of Independence believed and wanted to put into place by writing this document. Rousseau believed that power was equally owned by all the people in the government and that each person owes complete obedience to the sovereign (Barker, 223). This idea of implemented a new government may have been greatly influenced by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau who all believed that when citizens are under an illegitimate government, it is their responsibility to implement a newer and better government to rule. Without these two documents, America would probably be still under the rule of Great Britain and the representative democracy that we have today would probably not exists. Social contract theory is the view that morality is founded solely on uniform social agreements that serve the best interest of those who make the agreement. The citizens of the United States stated Great Britain's selfishness in the Declaration of Independence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed those social contracts were established to regulate social interactions.
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