Comparative Government Question?

Question

I am having problem making an essay out of this question. Does anyone have any ideas about what I should talk about.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Why did Jefferson claim that a legitimate government cannot exist without the consent of those who agree to governed? Do you agree or disagree with Jefferson? Why?

Answer 1

Jefferson didn't make this up by himself, it was the prevailing idea at the time.  In fact, it wasn't an American idea, it was a British idea!

During the period we call The Enlightenment (mostly the 1600s), British philosophers like John Locke talked about the nature and purpose of government.  The idea is that man is born free.  He gives up some of his freedom to government in return for social order and structure.  The government is an 'expression' of the will of the people.  The government works for the people, not the other way around.  And when governments no longer serve the needs of the people, the people have both the right and the DUTY to change the government to one that can better serve their needs.

The British people believed this!  They had a king but by this time they saw him as a public servant.  He was the employee of the people, not vice versa.  The American colonists were upset because they were being taxed for the cost of Britain maintaining troops here, and the British government was treating them badly.  At first they only wanted the same rights as other British subjects.  It wasn't until the war was already raging that Americans decided they wanted independence.  When Jefferson was asked to write the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War was already going on!

Jefferson was a Deist, a religion that came out of the Enlightenment, which was based on these same ideas.  Deists believed that God created the universe and then stepped back to let it run by itself, that he doesn't intervene, and consequently there are no 'miracles', just immutable natural law.  All you could learn about God, the Deists believed, was what you could gather by observing his 'creation', i.e. nature.  It was just about this time that 'natural philsophy' began to be studied, what today we call 'science'.  So often Deists wouldn't say "God", they'd say 'The creator'.  And natural law was 'self evident', not Biblical or doctrinal.  So the idea that man was free was 'self evident', the idea that man wanted to be free and had the right to preserve his freedom through government.