…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn 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…

Thomas Jefferson certainly had a way with words, such as these from the Declaration of Independence. No matter what political persuasion you prefer, unless of course you are a monarchist or a theocrat, Jefferson’s first fifteen words not only encapsulate the core of what Americans see as the proper relationship between the people and their government but succinctly describe where 21st Century America has more or less “gone off the rails.”

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