POL Assignment 3

Assignment (Due 10/1 ): Choose a passage from one of the readings (Adams, Rush, or Paine) and one from the Declaration of Independence. Write out both passages. Under that interpret the meaning of what the author is saying, and why they are saying it. Explain why you chose this passage and how it relates to the lecture.


"Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty," in matters spiritual and temporal, is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the law of nations and all well-grounded municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for 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.

In Both the excerpt from Declaration of Independence and the excerpt In Samuel Adams's "The Rights of The Colonists", The Laws of God and Nature are discussed. I think what they are referring to are laws that all men are entitled to simply based on the fact that they are alive and human. To me the laws of nature refer to laws that are basically embedded into human living for example the right to own land would be a law of nature because any man willing to put in the work, time, and money into land should be able to own it and do as he please with it. The laws made by men are more of a construct on how to be socially civilized amongst each other. The laws of God to me refer to how religion fits into society. No man should be denied right to practice any belief or any variation of beliefs. In both of these documents it is stated that there are rights that a man always has and should never be taken away.