Who gives us these rights? self-evident, created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness
2 Answers
It was in the Declaration of Independence.
Explanation:
When Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration, he made sure not to leave anything out, that King George III did wrong.
God. ( or a higher power)
Explanation:
Both Locke and Jefferson believed that people were created with certain rights. These rights came from the creator not from men. Since men were born with these rights, no government or law of man could legitimately take these rights away.
The Declaration of Independence quoted above was written because the government of England led by King George III believed that the government had the right to take these rights away.
In the colonial charters the citizens of the American colonies had been granted the "rights of Englishmen" . King George regarded the colonies as essentially possessions of the Crown. As such the colonies were tenants of the Crown. Tenants have only the right that the rightful land owners grants them.
King George decided that in order to better collect the taxes needed to pay for the French and Indian Wars he would revoke the rights granted to the colonies in their Charters. King George dissolved the colonial legislatures, appointed royal governors in place of the locally elected governors and raised taxes unilaterally.
Jefferson argued that since the basic human rights came from the creator not the government or the King, that the King had no right to take away the rights of the colonists. The King disagreed and the American Revolution was fought over the question of: do governments have the ability to make laws that revoke basic human rights.?
