[DiogenesLamp]

Divorce for cause, if you will, not divorce at pleasure.

This clause carries a lot of weight in my opinion.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

My thinking is that to err on the side of caution, "Just cause" should be left to the eye of the beholder. The English argued that the Colonists really didn't have a good reason for leaving, the stamp acts had been repealed, they were discussing representation in parliament, and most of their grievances were being addressed.

The colonists disagreed that their grievances had been adequately assuaged, and so they invoked their "natural law" right to leave and form their own government.

I will point out to you that the only extant philosopher of natural law that argued the right to independence and the right to form a Free Republic was Emerich de Vattel. No other writer of natural law would have dared suggest such a thing because all the rest of them lived in Monarchies.

Only Vattel, as a citizen of the Kingless Swiss Republic could make such a bold suggestion. The Idea of Independence was put into their heads by Vattel. :)

The DoI was simply not about whether they had a “right” to rebel and, if successful, be independent. It was t show why their rebellion was moral and justified.

But the argument that a Union which was the consequence of voluntary assent can also be dissolved by removing that consent, would seem to me a very powerful argument.

Indeed, many Northern newspapers of the time agreed. Their Headlines were along the lines of "Go in Peace our Bretheren". Much of the North had no interest in forcing the South back into the Union, and were it not for the recalcitrance and hyperbole streaming out of Washington they would have left their secession a fait accompli.

A sh*t they really did not give till they were stirred up by manufactured outrage and ordered to fight.

[Sherman Logan]

That's pretty much where we differ.

"whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends"

What were "these ends"?

Just what I've been talking about. The expansion of liberty, not the expansion of slavery.

Whether a people will gain their independence is largely a function of military effectiveness. Which the Founders knew perfectly well. Their Declarations was thus almost entirely a proclamation of why their desire for independence was right.

Because the British government was, or they believed it was, destructive of "these ends."

You may note that none of the secessionists contributed anything even vaguely similar, a paean to the spread of liberty.

Why was that? Perhaps because even they choked on claims their revolt was in the service of human liberty?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

As long as "the People" are in some approved arbitrary political entity, like a state, and not in some other entity, political or otherwise, right?