Life Liberty And The Pursuit Of Human Rights Essay

The Founding Fathers were inspired by the Enlightenment and the ideas of natural rights. In the Constitution Thomas Jefferson writes about “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” which was taken from John Locke who wrote “Life, Liberty, and Property”. However, when the Founding Fathers spoke about natural rights they were only applying to white men. Now when people talk about natural rights, more people recognize them as something for all genders. Women are now allowed to attend school and vote. I find that this is a great improvement from treating one demographic as the superior. To me natural rights means that everyone deserves basic human rights, no matter what gender. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence “...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”. This quote says that everyone are equal and deserve the same human rights. However, Jefferson, who wrote this owned over 600 slaves throughout his lifetime, despite claiming that he believed in natural rights. In a

Some people believe the worse in some people based on a prejudice stereotypes, however, most agree that everyone has the right to basic rights, such as the right to an education, own property, to vote, etc. There has been plenty of progress over the centuries, for example women now have access to all of the above, and can now even have a job, and chose whether to have children or not. Of course, there are still plenty of inequalities left, according to CNN “Women who work full-time earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts….with black women making 64 cents and Latinas making 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white man”. This shows how there are still gender and race prejudices that need to be improved