Assignment Four

"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.--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, and to institute new Government"

  This quote states that all people have the right to be treated equal in a government. These rights were given by God and should be taken away by any government. Included in these rights are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are created to preserve and protect these rights and to protect the people that it governs. If this government becomes hurtful to the people or is not protecting the people's rights then the people should be able to get rid of it. Once the people do get rid of this government them the people have the right to create a new government that protects the peoples rights.

I picked this quote because for one it is one of the most famous quotes from its time, but I don't believed that it was taken seriously. It does sound like a good thing to say but at this time there were slaves that didn't have any rights at all. So I don't understand that anyone can say that all people are equal and during this time there was a whole group of people that were considered property. Moreover I find it unbelievable that this quote mentions that God gives people certain rights and again slaves were still without anything. If all have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, then that should indeed included slaves of the time, but it didn't. Is is hard for me to understand that slaves weren't considered as people, humans or anything. Animals had more rights to liberty then slaves did at the time. I also find it ironic that the same people that wrote the Declaration of Independence had slaves themselves. I think that it is unimaginable to think that a whole group of humans were not considered to be citizens or people. What happened to their rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. It is impossible for people to have these rights when they didn't have any say and had "masters" that controlled every aspects of their life. If a slave did try to change or overthrow their "maters" and/or the government they and maybe even their family would have been killed or badly hurt. I also can not believe that it took 87 years after this document for the Emancipation Proclamation to be written and then another hundreds of years for African American to have equal rights. So in theory this document was good for the people, but in reality it didn't do what it stated for everyone in America.