“I thought I did in the last post but will try again. But first I have to ask you to clarify something. Are you saying the natural right to revolution is the same as a natural right of independence?”
I write mostly about the Declaration of Independence and not the Declaration of Revolution. I don’t know much about the Declaration of Revolution.
I don’t believe - and this is just a school boy talking - that the signers of the DOI believed they were rebelling, or revolting, or committing treason.
Once again, please explain what you meant when you posted: “I never said the founding fathers had no right to declare independence. I said there is no natural right to independence . . .”
Nonsense, because by July 1776 they were not just de facto at war against the King, they had long since been formally declared in rebellion.
August 23, 1775, "Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition".
That's why Benjamin Franklin's quip to other Declaration signers was just as truthful as it was funny:
The signers, and other founding fathers of the revolutionary period, knew they were rebelling. The following quotes will prove this point.
“Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, and measure in which the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn are intimately interested, are now before us. We are in the very midst of a revolution the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.” - John Adams Letter to William Cushing, June 9, 1776
“The times that tried men’s souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.” - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 13, 1783
“Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.” - James Madison, Federalist No. 14, November 20, 1787
“It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.” - James Madison, Federalist No. 37, January 11, 1788
The Declaration of Independence is the way they declared to the world that they were using the natural right of revolution to become free because of the long train of abuses and usurpations of England.
In political philosophy, the right of revolution (or right of rebellion) is the right or duty of the people of a nation to overthrow a government that acts against their common interests and/or threatens the safety of the people without cause. Stated throughout history in one form or another, the belief in this right has been used to justify various revolutions, including the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Iranian Revolution.
Again, I have never read of any natural right of independence ever being mentioned in natural rights philosophy.
I hope this clears things up.