Discussion Topic
The Declaration of Independence states that the government's power originates from the consent of the governed
Summary:
The Declaration of Independence asserts that the government's power derives from the consent of the governed. This principle emphasizes that governmental authority is legitimate only when it is supported by the people it governs, reflecting the democratic ideal that the power to rule comes from the collective agreement and participation of the citizenry.
Where, according to the Declaration of Independence, does the government get its power?
The Declaration of Independence views the source of government and legitimacy as ultimately grounded within God-given natural rights. Jefferson famously states,
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.
As he goes on to write in the very next sentence, governments are created to protect those natural rights, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." In short, government is created for a purpose (to safeguard the rights and freedoms of its people), and it only retains its legitimacy if it continues to honor that responsibility.
In essence, the American Revolution was founded on a political vision by which sovereignty was founded within the people and by which government should be answerable to the people. Of course, this should not be...
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understood as an invitation to lawlessness on the part of individuals. Rather, real power resides within the people as a collective, who voluntarily submit themselves to the government in order to protect their own well-being.
So long as government continues to act for the benefit and well-being of those that it governs (and with the support of those it governs), then it would continue to hold legitimacy. Should it stray from that path and act tyrannically against its citizens, then the people are within their rights to overthrow it and institute a new government in its place. This is precisely the charge that the Declaration of Independence levies against Great Britain, and the logic that it uses to justify the American Revolution.
The Declaration of Independence, of course, was intended by its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, to draw a marked contrast between the government it would establish and the one it would replace, with the latter characterized by the near-absolute power of monarchy. Jefferson and the other intellectual architects of American democracy (or republicanism) sought to distance the country they would forge from the distant autocratic one under whose yoke the North American colonies increasingly chafed. Key to establishing a government that would reflect the will of those over whom it governed was to ensure that this new political entity was truly representative of the population that would elect it. In drafting the subsequent Constitution of the United States of America, James Madison would similarly enshrine in this seminal document the principles of representative democracy. It was, though, in the Declaration of Independence where the crucial concept of consent of the governed was best exemplified. It is in the second paragraph that Jefferson spells-out precisely the source of the government's power: the people. In that paragraph, Jefferson wrote:
"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 . . ." [Emphasis added]
This section is the heart of American democracy. The system of representative government being established would be firmly rooted in the will of the people. No chief executive, no senator or congressman, and no justice would sit above the population, exercising unquestioned power. The president and the members of the legislature would serve at the pleasure of the populace -- not the other way around.
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Montesquieu was another political philosopher who influenced the shaping of the United States Constitution. Although he died in 1755, his ideas about the separation of powers were adopted and applied by James Madison, the principal author of the United States Constitution.
The reason behind the separation of powers concept is essentially pessimistic: Left unchecked, one branch of a government will seek to eventually dominate the others. Madison and the other constitutional framers sought to balance the three branches of government (legislative, executive, judicial) in order to “keep them honest”). For example, the president can veto Congress, but Congress can override the president, an the courts can declare a law unconstitutional.
Much of this distrust of governmental power grew out of centuries of monarchial rule in the European countries that populated America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The downside of this system can be seen today with what we refer to as “gridlock” in Washington. Without a dominant party, neither conservatives nor liberals can muster enough power to get much done legislatively. While the system keeps one branch from bullying the others, it also makes it very tough to get anything accomplished when you have different parties in power in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
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According to the Declaration of Independence, the government gets its power to govern from the people that it governs. As the Declaration says,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
This was an idea that derived from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke. These thinkers believed that people had natural human rights that they were born with. These were rights to such things as their life, their liberty, and their property. The problem was that, without government, other people could take these things away from them. People could rob, enslave, or kill others.
Because of this, people needed to have governments. What people did was to voluntarily give up some of their rights to a government in return for having their most important rights protected. A government was only legitimate, Enlightenment thinkers argued, when the people agreed to be ruled by it.
The writers of the Declaration of Independence borrowed their ideas from Locke and others like him. Therefore, they believed that government only justly held power if the people consented to give it that power.
According to the Declaration of Independence, where does the government's power originate?
The Declaration of Independence says that the power of the government comes from the consent of the people. This is one of the main ideas of John Locke’s thought, which strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson as he wrote the Declaration.
John Locke was a major political philosopher of the Enlightenment. He believed that monarchy was an illegitimate form of government. He believed that governments could only have legitimate power if the people agreed to be governed by those governments. Power was not legitimate if rulers held it just because the people were afraid to disobey them.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson echoes this idea. He writes that, in order to protect people’s rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
This tells us quite clearly that government’s power comes from the consent of the people that it governs. This is one of the basic ideas of modern democracies. In order for a government to be legitimate, it has to hold power because the people agree that it should, not simply because it can frighten them into submission.
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The Declaration of Independence lays out the philosophical basis for the new republic very clearly, in what may be the most famous political statement in the English language:
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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The very familiarity of these words may now detract from the radical nature of the ideas they express. The government derives its power from the consent of those it governs, not from God, right of conquest, or the innate superiority of the governing class. Not only that, but the people have given their consent to be governed for specific purposes, as one might delegate certain business affairs to a subordinate.
The American government does not merely rule, like a king. It has specific tasks to perform for the people: it must ensure that they are safe, free, and able to do what they believe will make them happy. As soon as the government ceases to do its job, whether through tyranny or incompetence, the people can fire it and employ a new government which will do the job better.
Although the Founding Fathers were drawn from the ranks of upper-class landowners, they profess in the Declaration of Independence to be the servants of the people rather than the masters, a radically new idea about government, which is the product of Enlightenment philosophy.
According to the Declaration of Independence, who gives the government power to govern?
According to the Declaration of Independence, we—the people of the nation—give the government the power to govern. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence begins with the extremely famous words,
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.
The declaration continues to say that in order to secure these unalienable rights, people create governments. These governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In other words, the people of the nation must consent to empower the government.
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were declaring the country’s intention to free itself from the rule of Great Britain and become independent with these words:
That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.
These men, the Founding Fathers of the United States, viewed Great Britain and its actions, specifically those of the king, as tyrannical. They wanted a modern type of government where the people would be safe from the tyranny or despotic behavior of a single ruler who had complete power. Writing of Great Britain, the Declaration says,
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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The Founding Fathers envisioned a government where people would have a say in the rules that governed their lives. Their input would come through the ability of the governed to elect the leaders who oversee the nation. In this way, a ruler or president, in the case of the United States, does not have the freedom to do anything he or she pleases, because it is the people who put that person in office and because the people could also decide that the ruler should be expelled from office or, at the very least, should not be reelected. In this way, governments are supposed to listen to what the people want.
One of the reasons why the Declaration of Independence was written was that the colonists thought the King was abusing his power. The colonists believed the British government was violating their rights as citizens of Great Britain. For example, the colonists said that the British government was taxing them without their consent.
The Declaration of Independence made it very clear that the government gets its power from the people. Another way to say this is that the government gets its power from the consent of the governed.
The Declaration of Independence went on to say that when a government doesn’t protect the people’s rights and abuses its powers, the people have no choice but to remove that government from power and replace it with a government that will protect their rights. The colonists tried to share their concerns with the King, but they felt that the King and the British government weren’t willing to hear their concerns and resolve them. Therefore, they needed to declare their independence and replace the old government with one that would protect their rights.
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According to the Declaration of Independence, the power and authority to rule is given to the government by the people that it governs. This is the only source of legitimate power for a government. The Declaration tells us that people have certain rights that have been given to them by God and that cannot be legitimately taken away from them. It tells us that, in order to protect those rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
This is where we see the source of the government’s right to rule. The government gets its right to rule from the consent of the people.
This was an idea that was central to the thinking of Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke. Locke, in particular, was a major source for Thomas Jefferson’s thinking as he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Locke argued that there was no way for a government to be legitimate unless the people that it governed agreed to be governed by it. He felt that governments that claimed legitimacy from God, for example, were giving justifications that had no basis in logic.
Thus, following Locke, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the right to rule comes from the consent of the governed.
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According to the Declaration of Independence, where does the government get its power?
The Declaration of Independence is a living embodiment of what's called social contract theory. This is a political philosophy that purports to explain the genesis of civil society. Most varieties of social contract theory attempt to place limits on the power of government, arguing that governments were originally established by the people for the protection of liberty.
It's just such an argument that forms the basis of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration makes it clear that ultimate sovereignty derives from the just consent of the governed. It was the people who originally established government to protect their liberties, and it's the people whose ongoing consent is required if that government is to continue governing. The implications of this section of the Declaration are radical indeed. If the government doesn't do what it's supposed to—if it doesn't protect life, liberty, and property—then the people have the right to get rid of it and put a new one in its place that will fulfill the terms of the original contract.
Where does the U.S. government get its power according to the Declaration and the Constitution?
Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and especially by the theories of John Locke concerning the source of power or legitimacy for governments.
Hereditary monarchies had drawn their authority from legitimacy of descent, in which monarchs passed their power down to their children. A second theory, popular in theocracies such as Egypt or ancient Mesopotamia and revived in early modern Europe, was the "divine right of kings," which argued that kings drew their authority from God. Another notion was that raw power itself constituted a form of authority or legitimacy ("might makes right").
The radical Enlightenment notion found in these two documents was that a government draws its power and legitimacy from the people and governs with the consent of the governed. Thus the Constitution begins with the phrase "we the people," who are seen collectively as the holders of power. Public servants such as presidents, congressmen, and civil servants do not have power themselves but are chosen by the people to do certain necessary administrative tasks.
Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States proclaim the power of the government comes from the people. In the preamble to the Constitution, the opening words indicate that this is where the power originates:
"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 for the United States of America."
The Declaration of Independence makes the same claim. In fact, it also makes it within the opening words:
"The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
The two documents present the idea of democracy in different ways. The Constitution directly states that the people have the power to create the governing rules, while the Declaration states the people have the power to pull away from an existing governing body in the face of tyranny and injustice.
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