That has nothing to do with what I'm saying. The question is whether or not our inalienable rights are self-evident. It's a historical fact that they weren't, even at the time the words were written.
Just because various people have violated the inalienable rights of others doesn’t mean they aren’t self-evident. It means they’re not self-enforcing. People, being fallible, can and do go against things they know to be obviously true (self-evident), as any smoker, drinker, or adventure sport participant can attest.
You don’t have a clue. The philosophy of Creator given, self evident rights derived by man’s right reason began with Aristotle, followed by Cicero, Aquinas, Locke and others.
It is the abandonment of Natural Rights that is the adoption of tyranny.
"That has nothing to do with what I'm saying."
It is interesting to me that you don't dispute Jacquerie's accusation that you are using a "leftist non-argument". You don't deny it's a leftist opinion at all. You simply say "That has nothing to do with what I'm saying".
Technically, it is self evident that one cannot take his life, and animate a dead person to life (or health, etc.) Life is "inalienable," it cannot be traded from one person to another.
Likewise "pursuit of happiness," or protection from the mobs, hoards and barbarians, depends on some sort of banding together for common defense. There might be a need for some discussion on that point, but the general idea that governments are erected to protect property rights, or function to protect property rights, and that personal happiness is somewhat tied to property rights, is controversial to a very small segment of humanity. But whatever the government/property/individual situation one finds oneself it, you can't swap it with the situation of a different person.
What has historically been true, and is true now, is that governments are self-serving, and the powerful people in government work more to fool the worker bees than to serve the worker bees. As long as the worker bees THINK they are free, the powerful maintain their elevated social standing over the weaker. One need not be a king in title, to be a king in practical fact.
If you were immersed in classical thinking (Aristotle logic) and Christianity (St. Thomas Aquinas-Natural Law)it is truly self evident. What is also necessary is the language of the culture to not hide the truth as does all Marxist societies and tribal (superstitious) societies.
If you say the big lie enough, that slaves are not men, then some people (especially those hearing it as young children) will believe that. It becomes a fact—the truth—the big lie. If they become rational thinkers in the Western Christian tradition, then they will be able to free themselves, eventually with the Truth, as long as there is freedom of speech and they are taught Western Civ. logic which includes Natural Law as young children.
Why do you think the commies threw out Western Civ at the Universities (Western Civ has got to go??) and degrade the whole canon of thought, along with all the heroes who you also demean?
It is to get rid of reasoned logic so the Big Lie is again believed which will (and is) used to kill other human beings—in the womb and elderly—which will soon extend to people who do not think “properly” as now people are being put in prison for thought crimes or forced into reeducation camps.
Governments and schools are trying to get rid of Western Civilization Natural Law and God’s Law logic, AS WE SPEAK, which will, indeed, create the paradigm that makes it possible to believe that slaves are things and can be eliminated.