Natural Rights, the Common Good, and the American Revolution

The American Enterprise Institute offers a major
intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique
value of their national inheritance. In the fourth volume of this series, legal
scholars and political scientists examine the many ways in which the founding
generation understood the "unalienable rights" immortalized by the Declaration
of Independence.

Although the Declaration described the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness as a "self-evident" truth, this characterization
belied the Revolutionary era's complex discourse on the origins of political
rights and their role in sustaining a political community.

Delving into these debates reveals how the
American Revolution encoded a productive tension between individual rights and
communal responsibilities at the nation's founding.