what’s happening to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?!
Recently, I noticed increasing instances where pundits and leaders on the Raght have vigorously advocated for the protection of “life, liberty and property”.
I first heard that phrasing by Glenn Beck. Then I noticed it several times in several different Fox sNooze segments. Then in some of the tea-party speeches. (I sometimes like to get ALL perspectives, first-hand. 
Sooo … whatever happened to the phrase that USED to be the mainstay of American political advocacy – demanding “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, as it IS stated in the Declaration of Independence?
Why are so many on the Raght systematically abandoning that long-standing declaration, subtly replacing it with this new formulation with its property preoccupation?
Hmmmm??? [Spread the word - or the question!]
–jim; Jim Warren, open-govt & tech-civlib advocate & sometime columnist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren
justjim36 on twitter | Jim Warren on Facebook
5 comments permalink | Jim Warren | Uncategorized
It comes from John Locke, a major influence on thinking in the days of colonial war for freedom from Great Britain. But, “life, liberty and the pursuit of property” was thought to be a less inspiring sound bite that required too much sophisticated thought, so in the fighting documents the word property was changed to happiness to better rouse the rabble to war.
Some lament the change since the subtlety of Locke’s though was lost. Property, in those days of slavery – indentured and otherwise – was considered to be an important or even primary route to happiness, but it lacked the fist-in-the-air thoughtlessness required to fire the mob. Few understand the context now, and few have any visceral understanding of freedom or property since they have seldom known a world where this was not taken for granted.
It’s a distinction worth contemplating, and Locke is a writer worth further study. See also the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which had been drafted by Founder George Mason, which influenced Jefferson.
It’s source appears to be in question. Either way however, it sounds like even Locke looked at “happiness” as encompassing MUCH more than merely pursuing or possessing property!
E.g., he is extensively QUOTED on this subject, about midway down in http://hnn.us/articles/46460.html :
…
It seems unlikely that Jefferson plucked “the pursuit of happiness” from the prose of a Tory like Dr. Johnson. Jefferson’s intellectual heroes were Newton, Bacon, and Locke, and it was actually in Locke that he must have found the phrase. It appears not in the Two Treatises on Government but in the 1690 essay Concerning Human Understanding. There, in a long and thorny passage, Locke wrote:
The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with, our real happiness: and therefore, till we are as much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases.
Just the ideas that inspired our intellectual Founders were primarily European imports, so that defining American phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” is not native to our shores. Furthermore, as the quotation from Locke demonstrates, “the pursuit of happiness” is a complicated concept. It is not merely sensual or hedonistic, but engages the intellect, requiring the careful discrimination of imaginary happiness from “true and solid” happiness. It is the “foundation of liberty” because it frees us from enslavement to particular desires.
…
A better understanding of the subtlety of the importance of property is the idea Locke expressed that “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”
I’ve wondered how the slavery issue might have been affected by recognizing the importance of clear property rights, beginning with your own body. The ideas are still current when considering other issues such as women controlling their own bodies, organ doners, various sexuality issues, and even futures when humans continue to hack themselves for enhancement or even just fashion. Happiness is a a part of that, a small part, but it’s really a much larger topic.
Slave holders could and sometimes did argue that slaves were “happy”. Some of them may well have been happy. Happiness seems a trivial idea compared to property.
Yes, John Locke identified the primary basic rights as “Life, Liberty, and Property”, and this was also stated in the first draft of Declaration of Independence. When I read Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England”, I was a little taken aback when I read a sentence close to the beginning of the first volume, something to the effect “We have natural rights to Life, Liberty and Property, which are necessary for the Pursuit of Happiness”.
So the Founding Fathers weren’t the first ones to come up with that phrase, either, nor were they the first to connect Life, Liberty, and Property with the Pursuit of Happiness.
Alpheus claims that the first draft of the Declaration read: “life, liberty and PROPERTY.” Has Alpheus found a long-lost copy that no other scholar, except Glenn Beck, has seen? If so, where can the rest of us see this “original” draft of the Declatation?
a