"The Persuit of Happiness" > Property

[Vessol]

Am I the only one who has been really bugged by this?

Natural rights/law I'm sure you're all well aware of. John Locke was one of the first writers of this and he wrote them as "Life, Liberty, and Estate(property)"

Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but it really bugs me that they changed this to the hugely subjective and undefined "Life, Liberty, and the persuit of happiness"

What is "the pursuit of happiness?" That's horribly subjective.
That's what not bothers me most though, it's the absence of Property that bugs me.
I just have this funny feeling that crappy phrase was added to undermine the very idea of property by the Statists..

Or am I just being a whiny little bitch over a harmless phrase?

[MaxPower]

Am I the only one who has been really bugged by this?

Natural rights/law I'm sure you're all well aware of. John Locke was one of the first writers of this and he wrote them as "Life, Liberty, and Estate(property)"

Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but it really bugs me that they changed this to the hugely subjective and undefined "Life, Liberty, and the persuit of happiness"

What is "the pursuit of happiness?" That's horribly subjective.
That's what not bothers me most though, it's the absence of Property that bugs me.
I just have this funny feeling that crappy phrase was added to undermine the very idea of property by the Statists..

Or am I just being a whiny little bitch over a harmless phrase?
The phrase "pursuit of happiness" actually also comes from Locke and has often been understood to be a broader term which includes property rights, and notably, Jefferson's draft of the Declaration does imply property rights within its list of grievances against the king (one of which involves inciting the "forfeiture and confiscation of our property"). Jefferson used the "life, liberty and property" triad as well on more than one occasion in his writings. "The pursuit of happiness" simply makes for a much more poetic turn of phrase.

[Uncle Emanuel Watkins]

A natural right reduced down physically as it would have to as there existed only natural science at the time being that there existed no such thing as the cognizant sciences (psychology, sociology, political science, and so on). Immanuel Kant, both the father of epistemology as wall as one of the fathers of the French Revolution, ushered in the cognizant sciences while he was a peer to our Founding Fathers.
Therefore, there is a difference between Locke's natural rights and those things called civil rights today.

[Uncle Emanuel Watkins]

The terms "self-evident" and "unalienable" make this point mute as you know what this means as a human being. In other words, this cherished Civil Purpose belongs to the American people while we don't need any experts interpreting its meaning for us. This had to be so simple that a king could know it and not deny it. As these truths were known not in the human mind, but in the heart, soul and conscience of every human being, they were declared self-evident and unalienable. Because he ignored his conscience, the king was rightfully deemed a tyrant and then the American people divorced out from under his rule.

[demolama]

"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 Property."

There was a fear that the unalienable right to property would be understood as everyone has the right to property rather than the ability to obtain property. We see this debate in other Age of Enlightenment thought. Rousseau was notorious for the idea of people giving up individual freedom in order to get them back through the collective good. So rather than have the Rousseau idea of property rights they ensured people understood that it was the pursuit of property was emphasized over the concept of owning property

[virgil47]

"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 Property."

There was a fear that the unalienable right to property would be understood as everyone has the right to property rather than the ability to obtain property. We see this debate in other Age of Enlightenment thought. Rousseau was notorious for the idea of people giving up individual freedom in order to get them back through the collective good. So rather than have the Rousseau idea of property rights they ensured people understood that it was the pursuit of property was emphasized over the concept of owning property

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