how do we refer to our two for two systems of all right Secretary of State hi and welcome back to mr. Raymond civics COC Academy so today we're gonna be talking about the Declaration of Independence now in our last video we talked about how the British policies mostly the taxes and the colonial reactions to them led to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence our declaration that we were independent from the British now we know how we were upset about the taxing there was protests and some violence - okay there was already fighting in Lexington and Concord and it was time to declare our independence and establish our own country those thirteen separate colonies or States if you will would become the United States under one national government so today we're gonna talk about the actual document itself which is one of the most famous in the history of the world this document is continually recited especially its most famous proclamation 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 we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal endowed with certain inalienable rights life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness that's what makes us unique 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 now in our last video we spoke about the Continental Congress and this was a gathering of delegates or representatives from the various colonies who had come together in Philadelphia to decide what to do about our problems with the British okay we discussed how fighting had already taken place in Lexington and Concord and in June of 1776 the delegates chose three of their members one who was already well known and that was Benjamin Franklin and two who would go on to become famous and among our first presidents and that was John Adams and Thomas Jefferson now Adams decided that Jefferson should write the text those famous words of which he would be forever remembered and those words would be released to the colonies and to the world on July 4 1776 now I know this is a date that some people say should be celebrated on July 2nd when it was voted on or in August when it was signed but July 4th is our celebration of our Declaration of Independence so let's look at exactly what we need to know about this document which leads us to our benchmark analyze the ideas and those ideas are natural rights and the raw of government and the complaints set forth and the Declaration of Independence now I've underlined natural rights role of government and complaints and these are the three main things that we need to master so the declaration can be broken down into five main sections some people put the first two together and we'll go over these in some detail but I would recommend writing these down as a list first and these sections are the introduction which describes why the colonists are breaking up with England second is the preamble and this is the famous section that most people know it contains our natural rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness how our government should be set up through consent of the government and a description of what happens when government becomes bad and this is the section that contains two out of the three things that we need to master next is comes the grievances and grievances is a word we defined in one of our last videos as formal complaints and these were directed towards the King King George the third after this is what I call the justifications section which kind of explains how we tried to be cool with all the evil things the King was doing but that didn't really work and finally the conclusion which says hey Britain it's over we are done okay so the introduction says when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another in other words sometimes to people peoples have to go their own ways and then it says they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation okay so the intro is saying the u.s. is going to separate or start their own country and this document is going to explain why following the introduction we get into the good stuff the preamble which starts out by saying 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 now this is one of the most famous sentences ever written this is the sentence that's quoted by world leaders and celebrities alike so let's take a further look at it this is the sentence that also contains the natural rights we discuss in the benchmark so let's break down the vocabulary and the meaning of this famous sentence first of all we hold these truths to be self-evident now self-evident is kind of like saying this is obvious but it wasn't obvious at the time okay and next that all men are created equal now this powerful little statement seemed seems obvious to us today although we would probably add women however women at the time were not treated equally nor was a huge percentage of the population and remember this is a time where there there was slavery in America okay in fact the author of the document himself Jefferson owned slaves he did want to include a passage about getting rid of slavery in the document but this was an incredibly powerful statement at the time and even though it wasn't necessarily true it was like a goal think of this as a goal for the country somewhere we would like to be at some point and this was incredibly powerful because you know there was a rigid system of hierarchy that means there was different classes different levels of people especially in Europe where most people in America had come from okay so again this was a really powerful statement okay next that they are endowed by their creator and a doubt means to be given something and creator in this case was God okay and for the men of the Enlightenment as well as today that creator was a way of saying that the following rights were given to man by God not government's and therefore these rights that he's about to list are the natural rights okay again our benchmark and what were these rights these rights were life liberty and the pursuit of happiness now I hope these words were familiar to you before our last video and that hopefully now we see the inspiration that philosopher John Locke was to Thomas Jefferson which we're gonna review in a minute but these are the natural rights that Thomas Jefferson said should be provided to everyone life liberty which means freedom and the pursuit of happiness and these rights were not given to us by government but by God or nature they are again natural rights and not only that but these are unalienable rights the word unalienable means rights that cannot be taken away okay I kind of skipped through that last but unendurable rights or rights that can't be separated from us okay so our next part begins to explain the second part of the benchmark which is the role of the government and that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men just normal people deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed so the first first part to secure these rights explains that this is why we have government to protect our life liberty and pursuit of happiness and not only that but that these governments get their power from the consent of the governed or the people we are the governed and when we give our consent consent is a word which means permission okay that means that the power comes from us and Jefferson goes on to state this power if abused can be taken away by the people now in a previous video we discussed John Locke's notion of what was called the social contract the idea that the people are the source of government power and that we give that power to the government to protect as light as Locke would have said life liberty and property almost exactly the words of Jefferson set right so this is not only the purpose of the government to protect our natural rights but we are the ones that give government that power through the social contract ok let's take a closer look at this again this is our comparison between John Locke and Jefferson John mah talked about natural rights Thomas Jefferson described these as on the alienable rights Locke said these rights are life liberty and property and Jefferson's changed it up a little bit to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness ok whereas John Locke talks of the social contract we talk about consent of the government now because the people have given their consent and in an age when most of Europe lived under Kings and the people had very little say in their government Jefferson continues and explains what happens quote unquote that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and Institute a new government he goes on to talk about despotism despotism is an evil government not only is it the right of the people to throw off such a government but it is their duty to provide a new government ok so just looking a little closer at that to alter means to change and to abolish means to destroy despotism again is when a leader abuses their power so a despot is like an evil leader now I've seen an EOC question that described protests in Egypt a couple of years ago in which the people overthrew their government and asked which section of the Declaration this was the EOC question which section of the Declaration would kind of agree with what the people in Egypt were doing and the answer was quote/unquote to alter or abolish the government so make sure you know this this is a possible test question okay so our next section when I know we spent a lot of time in the preamble but there's only one other section we need to really know and that is the grievances okay now I'm gonna go through these pretty quickly but I recommend you spend some time with these grievances and read them so what did evil King George the third do and it's significant that Jefferson focused the complaints at the king saying he did this and he did that okay so what it King George do well he has forbidden his governor's to pass laws of immediate pressing importance in other words he won't not only will he not let us pass our own laws but he won't pass laws to help us what else won't he won't give us representation in Parliament okay we kind of know that one and that one especially makes us mad for imposing taxes on us without our consent this is taxation without representation right okay and these are kind of the grievances about laws and lawmaking power again he won't let us pass our own laws all right he has suspended or dissolved our legislatures which we call Assemblies and that's that picture of him the left okay and not only that he won't give us representation in Parliament that's Parliament at the bottom there all right and this leads to our famous battle cry no taxation without representation now another big section of our complaints is about courts okay he wouldn't let us now we had had courts but he starts taking this away okay and he won't let us set up our own courts and his courts that he does have over here has taken away some basic rights like trial by jury he not only takes away trial by jury but he starts to ship people over to England to be tried okay not just the colonists but also royal officials so if you are a colonist and you're shipped all the way across the ocean to England are you gonna get a fair trial over there probably not and the royal governors and the royal officials who were over here in the colonies when they committed crimes they would be sent back to England for their trials they wouldn't let us try them here so are those guys gonna have a trial over there that's gonna represent our interest probably not they're probably gonna get off easy now to make matters worse our last area of grievances or complaints is that the king is basically fighting a war against us already okay now the first part he cut off our trade with other nations and that's not really about war but it's a basic thing that makes us angry all right but we went over this last time he's already sent over his army and is making us quartered them here all right these are the standing armies that are here without our consent he is by the way he is sent over what are known as mercenary troops and mercenary troops were troops from other countries which he's sent here to help fight us and keep us in line all right and he has quote unquote burnt down our towns and destroyed the lives of our people so it's basically war is already being fought against us so why would we not declare our independence sorry and this leads us to our conclusion this is basically saying hey we are now quote unquote free and independent states or one big United States and that all connections to Great Britain are now being dissolved and that we should be able to declare war and of course this declaration meant just that it would take eight years of war until we would be truly almost free of the British we had another little fight with them in 1812 and it took us a little while to get them out of here but we were now the United States ready to create our own national government and that is where we will pick up next time I hope you learned a little something please be sure to subscribe for more videos and thanks for watching scholars