O n this Independence Day, it is worth taking time away from fireworks and picnics to contemplate, and rejoice in, two key phrases from the Declaration that gave this day its name. And we’re not talking about all men being created equal or about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those are worthy ideals, but they give no real-world prescriptions for free governance. Instead, the heart of the Declaration’s famed second paragraph comes right after those lofty sentiments. “To secure these rights,” the document states, “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The first key phrase is: “To secure these rights.” Note that the government does not “give” rights, but secures rights. The rights — life and liberty among them — pre-exist the government, just as they pre-exist the mention of government in the Declaration. Government’s job is not to dispense rights like favors, but to secure and protect the rights to which mankind is entitled by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Government is properly in the service of those rights, inferior to those rights, and has no reason for existence apart from preserving those rights.
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Moreover, government enjoys powers to secure those rights only to the extent that the people consent to be governed. That is the second key phrase: “the consent of the governed.” Government does not rightly give its consent for the people’s activities; the people give their consent to the government’s limited activities. It’s that simple.
All too often today, politicians and TV talking heads confuse the issue. In 2006, for instance, Hillary Clinton said that “in our society, it is the people who have given their collective rights to the government to use only as necessary.” No, no, a thousand times no. The people have never “given their rights,” much less given them collectively, much less given those rights to “the government.”
The people in these United States form a government from their own number and by their own free will, with certain people among their number given the duties and responsibilities necessary to make sure that rights are not infringed. It is only in that light, the light of a government of consent whose job is to secure pre-existing rights, that we free men and women are moved each Fourth of July to rightly pledge “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
