The Declaration of Independence is one of the most pivotal documents to ever pass through any sort of American government. Thomas Jefferson is most often accepted as the writer of this document, an almost insurmountable fact. The more important of the facts, however, is the theories behind such a prodigious document. Many of 'Jefferson's' ideals came from the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. Within Locke's book, Two Treatises of Government, government in his mind is formed throughout a series of different proposals of how a central power should run. This government has rudiments in his three unalienable rights: life, liberty, and property. Jefferson rendered a similar list of rights, almost blatantly plagiarizing Locke with the United States' enumerated 'unalienable' rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.



What should further concern those currently in power is John Locke's other theories of social contract. Locke believed that government has one purpose, to protect the unalienable rights of the people it governed. Amidst the concepts of popular sovereignty, Locke explains the reason a man should subject himself to governance. The people enter into a sense of government for the protection. Locke states that at any point, if the government does not fulfill its duty, the duty turns to the people to overthrow the government, for its failed purpose. America has come to a point where throughout, unalienable rights are not being protected, and the government must be overthrown. Even Thomas Jefferson states: 'Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.' The United States government has failed in protecting the people's rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.



Within a relatively modern American government, the powers that be continue to use deplorable acts that are sustained by a na've American people. Of the three unalienable rights, the one most severely violated is the right to life. While abortions are a personal choice and murder completely outside the government control, the government still condemns thousands of people to die in a fight that is not their own. Hitherto today's newspaper headlines, natural born Americans are bleeding out on foreign sand under a government's declaration of war. In a pure anarchist state, global wars are not propagated under the guise of national pride or a soldier's sense of duty. In a war that shows no purpose to anyone other than a secretive government, thousands of young men and women have been killed by military extremists and the government that sent them there. For years, America has been growing into the shell of an imperialistic nation, using an overly militant Army and Navy to use the rest of the world as a playground. This is the same government here today.



The second of the unalienable rights that have been violated is the right to liberty. Setting aside criminals and asylum dwellers, the American government infringes on personal liberty every day. During the W. Bush administration, a common practice to unwarranted wiretapping became prevalent in the government's day to day actions. Under the relative brevity of the Patriot Act, the government could use its nearly unlimited power to spy on natural citizen's that had no proven affiliation with Al Qaeda or any other militant terrorist organization. A popular war time slogan states that 'freedom is not free', but is this espionage on the part of the United States government the freedom that our men and women overseas are dying to protect? If so, this is a maimed freedom and an unjust justice, for the government is using back door fears of terrorism to infringe upon a citizen's right to liberty. The United States Government can claim protection and safety all that it wants, but the truth is that it is using fear of its citizens to betray them on their own soil.


Only one other of the 'unalienable' rights remains. The right to the pursuit of happiness. Other than the war and the economy, happiness within American culture may be hard to define, and the source even harder to pinpoint. If at a time the government serves its citizens' true happiness, it is only as a probationer, with one false step moving back. Currently, an economic crisis is once again hitting the United States, thanks largely to a United States government who can't control its own infrastructure properly. As this serves as an expedient link to the citizens, and the economy dwindles, so do the chances of any American solving his or her chances of their version of the American Dream. The United States Government has successfully used a cogent argument to sustain that it only acts at the will of its people. More importantly, the power that remains has successfully cut off any sort of true pursuit of happiness with an overwhelmingly failing economy that is now a burden on every man and women who is paying taxes to an ineffective government.


Another one of the Enlightenment and Transcendentalist writers is found in Henry David Thoreau. One of the more famous articles he wrote is found in the title of Civil Disobedience. As the title may indicate, it describes the acts and consequences of not following the rules he found immoral or all together ineffective. He willingly spent time in a prison for a modern day equivalent of tax evasion, for he did not believe in paying taxes to a government that he thought was not in the best interests of its people. Many others fall into the mold of civil disobedience, including famed Indian leader Mohandis Gandhi, who lead nonviolent protests, and a man who many think is Gandhi's American counterpart, Martin Luther King Jr. All three of these leaders were intellectual men who believed the government was failing, and therefore resisted in a non-revolutionary way and effectively stirred millions to their causes. These are the men America needs now, men to fight the corruption that is so obviously seen.

Henry David Thoreau had another famous inclination. After withdrawing himself from society, as described in his book, Walden, Thoreau became affected by the government only in a minimalistic way. In the book, he describes more of a natural instinct he observed in animals and humans who lived under the radar of the government much as Thoreau himself did. Throughout Walden, he noted how animals and men acted in their naturalistic state, a figurehead taken away by the power of government.

The man who epitomized this animal nature theory and its corresponding theory of survival of the fittest, is of course, Charles Darwin. While focusing mainly on how certain breeds of animals had come to be by merging only the strongest features within their respective ancestors to continue life, while the weaker aspects of the species died out, creating a stronger species in general. With moral and religious inhibitions of papists aside, scientifically humans are a member of the Animalia Kingdom, and therefore have the same natural and animalistic instincts.

If humans had been left to a purely anarchist state, survival of the fittest would have ensued within the race of Homo sapiens as well. As a natural process, the strongest or the most intelligent of the species would breed more strong and intelligent offspring, while the weaker of the race died off. As the scientifically most intelligent species on this planet, humans could have evolved into a super race if not for the interference of government. In today's government, as well as the governments of past nations, the weak are protected throughout various channels. Instead of natural selection ensuing in the direction it was naturally intended to, a sympathetic regime instead protected the weaker of the species, allowing for inter breeding and a generally weaker race. A concept long forgotten, misogyny now is buried beneath government initiatives for 'equal rights'. In a naturalistic state, no legislation could prove one of the species' sexes equal to the other.

In today's society, a raiment of protection covers those who are too weak to protect themselves. Government takes hard earned money from the prime of the race and comforts the weak with it. In a natural state, the weak would have been killed off or died off naturally. However, thanks to the protection of the government, weakness is still running through the bloodlines of the human race. By every scientific proof available, the government has digressed to a sub-animalistic state of being, for not even the worms in the ground allow their weak to be in their future. Only in a flawed computation will government appear to be the best option.

Despite recent political slogans to the contrary, the human race does not accept change well. They have been protected and weakened under the government for thousands of years; they are still laboring under the delusions that the government is protecting them for the better. Of a more serious concern, the government still maintains a high level of power and would consider any return to a naturalistic state pure treason. In this respect, every citizen who is interested in true freedom must take an approach epitomized by Islam militant leader Malcolm X: 'By any means necessary'. There will be resistance at every level of power, but in order for a truly free society, the overbearing government must be overthrown by a citizen's revolt, the only true meaning of a grassroots movement. In deference to Gandhi and Thoreau, revolution is bloody, and must be treated as such.

Social contract is defined as an agreement among individual people in a society or between the people and their government that outlines the rights and duties of each party. (Encarta Dictionary). According to the social contract known as the Declaration of Independence, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been violated, and thus must be overturned. Nature has taught us that the animalistic state is the natural hierarchy, and a return to human animalistic instinct is crucial to the betterment of the race. Government is not a friend to its subjects; it is a cruel slave master to those who so willingly eat out of its palms.