The first of these is the assertion of popular sovereignty to create a new state: in the Declaration's words, the right of "one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."(Using the pedestrian terminology of organizations, the Declaration was the mission statement while the Constitution was the first attempt at the policies and procedures manual.)
The second and more famous element of the Declaration is its ringing endorsement of the sanctity of the individual: "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."
Throughout history to the present day, the most heated debates concerned the meaning of the words in the founding documents. One development has been clear: the two "conflated" elements of the Declaration are often in conflict with State power that has grown all over the world:
In the Declaration of Independence, the same principles that empowered one people to separate from the British Empire also gave them, as individuals, certain expectations about how they would be treated by their own governments in the future.
Today's authoritarians are eager to flex their sovereign muscles, especially in suppressing dissent at home and criticism from abroad, but they don't like the second half of the equation—the notion that their authority derives, ultimately, from the "unalienable rights" of their citizens.
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