What Are Thomas Jefferson's Views On Individual Rights

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This essay with attempt to cover objections to the concept of absolute individual rights. Conflict peppers the history of individual rights in its relationship to collective rights. The drafter of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson found individual liberty as more important to wellbeing of people. Large modern societies struggle with individual rights to maintain functional stability. And answer the moral questions that face humanity collectively and there relation to individual rights. This essay explores Thomas Jefferson's ideas on individual rights, moral objections to some individual rights and social problems with individual liberties. First, I will discuss Thomas Jefferson's ideals of individual rights from his writings. Thomas Jefferson is part responsible for the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" that champions absolute individual rights. Historian Joseph J. Ellis in his book American Sphinx described Jefferson's idea of governance as fundamentally anarchy. The near anarchical state that the drafter of the Declaration of Independence envisioned a natural self-correcting mechanism within society to avoid moral dilemmas. Thomas Jefferson even advocated for generational sovereignty that forbid the passing down of laws or debt to the next generation. Wanting to give absolute…show more content…
Does the individual right to the pursuit of happiness justify the killing of animals? People with most or all psychopathic traits might find pleasure in the killing animals and playing with their remains. Later in life an absence of remorse due to brain underdevelopment may discover a sexual pleasure from killing people. These people's source of happiness harm others and must not be allowed for complex society to continue. Absolute freedom presents a danger also if happiness means controlling society to ethnically cleanse or manipulate it for selfish

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