-both parties abandoned declaration due to libertarianism, what does Allen mean by Libertarianism?

- politics is human beings self-protective human instinct being channeled into a human acitivty. While
animals exhibit forms of social organization, humans use wakefulness to organize socially in a way that
benefits society as a collective, without the need to resort to fighting. A natural instinct that prevents
society from degeneration into devastation. Our ability to carry out self-protection in a nondestructive
way is an ability given to us by Nature’s God, our “dowry”.

- Jefferson drafted the constitution 80 years before Darwin discovered Evolution. Jefferson believes in a
deist, godhead as the source of nature’s order, but not in the authority of revelation. He thought the
bible wasn’t literally true and was called an atheist. He believes there were universal moral truths in
religion, he wrote a book called Jefferson Bible.

- fundamental feature of human equality- None can judge better whether I am happy; each can judge
for herself. As judges of our own happiness, we are equals. We are equal in sharing a status as rights-
bearing creatures. This means that we are also equal in being political creatures giving us each equal
access to the tools of government.

-Human are all capable of participating in politics due to their innate ability to be the best of judge their
own happiness. John Locke “image of a slave ship”, argued that the experience of judging actions of
abusive political leaders is like being a passenger on a ship with a secret destination. Captain might steer
this or that way, but despite the chaos the passengers know the general direction. Within all the random
and disconnected details patterns emerge, allowing humans to engage as political beings to scrutinize
the present.

- The declaration believes nearly all of us scrutinize the relationship to future well enough to move inch
by inch towards happiness, unbounded optimism, allows us to be collectively able to alter or abolish
existing government and institute new ones

-In order for that to exist, a political system needs to be built out of conversation, where multitudes
share what they have come to understand with each other. Only then can such a system make good on
the fundamental human truth that none can judge better whether I am happy.

- Structure of committees and meetings in Continental congress gave living form to the importance of
conversation for setting individual and collective happiness in relation to each other.

- Democratic government is the instrument that citizens use to hold the conversation in which we figure
out how to relate our prospects for happiness to those of others. To secure our future we all need equal
access to the instrument of government.

-main facets of equality in declaration – freedom from domination and need for equal access to tool of
government. Second is we are all best judges of happiness

- third facet is that we need to build a collective intelligence which relies on egalitarianism. Epistemic
Egalitarianism is the philosophical belief that everyone has something to contribute to the shared work
of cultivating a collective intelligence that maximizes the community’s knowledge capacities.

- fourth facet of equality is the principle of reciprocity.

- Why have belief in peoples abilities to get out of bad situations?

-Prudence and habit keep people from starting a revolution when it is not necessary or revolting
whenever they feel. People do not easily abolish the forms to which they are accustomed.

- Mankind are more disposed to suffer than to alter their situations. Not just due to prudence and being
cautious, but because of humans remarkable capacity for endurance.

- the colonists experience the force of necessity as “one people”. Third meaning of people, the residents
of the colonies now have a set of political institutions separate and different from those of the mother
country

- not a gift from god, political order emerges from the human need to gather together peaceably. A
multitude organized politically becomes a people. “shared political insitutions”.

-the colonists asserted their equality, as a separate institution from Britain. Because the colonies had set
up shared political institutions, they had the capacity to gather collectively similarly to Britain and the
other big powers at the time. Neither wealth nor military power increased the capacity of society to
organize itself

-Societies have that capacity when they can build functioning political organizations through which
collective decisions can be made. Wealth and military powers help increase the capacity of a society to
organize other societies but not itself.

- colony- organized by someone else, state- organized by itself, states claimed their equality to other
states a right to be free from domination, equal as a power, they don’t have the same amount of power
but they are equal as a power and political entity