“The Constitution was written to prohibit the Government from intruding on those rights, among many other things. So if the Constitution protect those ideals, I would assume that it would have legal standing because every law that is on the books is base on one of those three premises (supoosed to be anyway).”
The Declaration didn’t invent natural rights theory. It has a LONG history predating that document.
I’d like to think the Constitution was written in order to protect our God-given rights, but that’s one of those airy abstractions that’s neither here nor there. Governments exist to command, and the Constitution presented a government its framers thought was best framed to get people to obey. They also believed in liberty, to some extent. Some would say having a powerful central government at all is an affront to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I am more and more convinced this is so. Then again, I’m not convinced things would be better without one.
Anyway, to get back to my point, the Declaration was all about one thing: declaring independence from Britain. That it did so with flowery language about liberty is secondary. If Americans believe in the Declaration’s philosophy, it does because it had been taught to do so beforehand and was repeatedly convinced to do so afterwards, partly because of the document itself but mostly because of the culture at large.
Indeed, IIRC it was John Locke and was called "enlightenment period" and was penned by him in the 1100's
The Declaration's main intent of course was to separate from the King of course but it did imo lay the foundation of our Country. As far as being taught what the founding documents meant, it didn't happen to me in school, I learned from reading what the framer had in mind by their own writing and of course the DOI and Constitution.
I graduated in 79 and the years I attended was only taught superficial history.
I wouldn't necessarily describe the wording in the DOI as flowery, I'd say it was eloquent. Flowery sounds a bit pejorative to me, don't get me wrong, I'm not nit picking your words but feel that the words used to describe the fundamental principles are every bit as important as the separation from Britain. I don't think either reason it was written is more or less important than the other. The fact that it hasn't been taught is indeed the reason for the downfall of our culture, if we do not teach who we are, how we got here and the basis of the whole thing, then we have no culture, that's why we are where we are, imho