The foundation stone for our Government is in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
That Natural Law is self evident, and authority to write this declaration is derived from this law.
All men are created equal. Everyone knows that there have never been two humans that were the same, so what does this mean? The context here is important. The government at the time of this declaration was the British Monarchy. The king claimed a divine right to rule. In other words, he was born to rule the whole earth. That all men are created equal means that we have just as much right to determine our government as the king. It also means that everyone is entitled to any other unalienable rights that humans have.
Creator. If the God of the old testament created us, or we were created by some other mechanism, we were still created with these rights.
Certain rights are unalienable, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The accepted phrase for this concept at the time was Life, Liberty and Estate. Jefferson had expanded the concept past just land holding to all personal property, and also the right to make choices about your life. Lets restate these to be clear. You have the right not to be killed by other people. You have the right not to be imprisoned or enslaved. You have the right to own land or other property. You have the right to make choices about how you live. These right also included the rights to defend these rights. You can defend your life, liberty, property and choices. All of these rights can be taken away under due process of law, but in the absence of you losing them through crimes or voluntary choice, you have those rights.
One more key concept of unalienable rights is that they apply to everyone, even those not in the jurisdiction we are in. Its also important to reiterate is that they cannot be taken away. Even if everyone in a nation votes and passes a law to kill you or remove your right of self defense without due process of law, you still retain the right to life and self defense.
Consent of the governed. Again, back to context. The king derived his power to govern from God. This new concept is that the 13 free and independent States did not get their authority to govern from God, but rather individuals received the power to choose their own government by their nature of being human, and that the 13 free and independent States in turn received their authority from the individuals of those States.
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