It is one of my favorite pieces of written work and a marvel, but Jefferson freely admitted borrowing passages from John Locke's wonderful works
Thomas Jefferson, along with the other Founding Fathers, adhered to rather conventional 18th century political ideas, derived mainly from the works of Locke and Montesquieu. The Declaration of Independence, which is often cited in the media as a marvel of originality, is nothing but a trite paraphrase of the leading ideas in John Locke's 1693 "Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government". John Adams thought the DOI was hackneyed, and James Madison apologized for its plagiarism by saying that "The object was to assert, not to discover truths."
John Locke, Concerning Civil Government, 1693, second essay, Ch. 19
Secondly: I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going, it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the end for which government was at first erected...
Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
http://www.anesi.com/q0033.htm No one posed the issue more forthrightly than did Isabel Patterson in her book "The God of the Machine," written in 1943: "There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than is required to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure." She declared that "every politically controlled education system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy, sooner or later. ...
A tax-supported compulsory educational system --- is the complete model of the totalitarian state."
Patterson wasn't talking about Cuba, she was talking about America. Her words are prophetic. It is plain to see, for anyone who wishes to see, that the government of the United States has begun the process of usurping parental rights, and dictating what our children may and may not know, believe, think and value.
I have John Locke in my library...not the man, but his writings:-) Veddy interesting stuff. Down through the ages great writers and philosophers have been heavily influenced by predecessors. This is nothing new. There are no really "original" ideas, but there are terrific articulations of these ideas, and Jefferson did a masterful job.