![]() Put another way, we are as far removed from the year of American independence as the Founding Fathers were from the world of Martin Luther and Copernicus. #EX INORDINATEO VEN PECUNIA FREE#Our nation has changed a great deal from the days in which voting was limited to propertied free white men, and enslaved African Americans were considered three-fifths of a human being for purposes of representation, to a country in which women and African Americans are viable candidates for the highest office in the land. The American experiment has evolved since our country’s founding. Some interpreters-called originalists-insist the Constitution should be construed according to the original intent of the framers, while others- non-originalists-maintain it is a living document that can and should be interpreted according the times we live in now. Exactly how their meaning should be read is an ongoing debate in our society today. What they all have in common are two things: They are foundational to our ideas of freedom, and because they are also the product of particular times, places, and understandings, they require interpretation. Some of the documents in this book, such as presidential addresses, speeches, and letters, point out the road forward others, such as constitutional amendments, carry this vision into law. This short example illustrates an important fact: This is a book of historical documents, but historical documents of a special nature. Seen in this light, the pursuit of happiness -an idea used to defend everything from civil rights to same-sex marriage-can mean to own and enjoy property." However, happiness, as anyone who has read the Greek philosopher Aristotle knows-and Jefferson did indeed read his Aristotle-is impossible without property, so the two ideas are really one and the same. Jefferson borrowed the words Life, Liberty, and Property from the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, but replaced Property with the more general phrase the pursuit of Happiness. These words-the rationale for the creation of the United States as expressed in the Declaration of Independence-did not spring fully formed from the mind of Thomas Jefferson. 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. ![]()
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