The US Founding Documents Through the Lenses of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Marx: A Power Analysis (original) (raw)

Asian Journal of Basic Science & Research

░ 1. Introduction This article discusses the interplay of power between American colonists and Great Britain's monarchy based on America's founding documents, specifically the Declaration of Independence, where the Founders recorded the anti-democratic tenets leveraged by Great Britain against colonists and the colonists' counterstrategy to gain independence. Great Britain's anti-democratic strategy included species of dehumanization, subjugation, nativism, social distinctions, fear, and misinformation. The Founders leveraged a counterstrategy of knowledge, human dignity, fairness, hope, unity, and security, or their species. Their goal was to establish a new form of government that fostered trust, nurtured hope, and enlarged the concept of self-determination beyond the government to include individuals. Understanding the interplay of power between these two parties requires a review of the type of government the American Founders wished to abolish and the species of democratic government they sought to establish. The Declaration of Independence emphasized a government empowered by the people and foreshadowed the principles of empowerment embedded in the Constitution that uphold respect for human dignity, leading to security. Knowing the power of words, the Founders empowered American colonists to pursue independence through sentiments promoted by Jefferson and the leaders of the Continental Congress through the idea that: 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 affect their Safety and Happiness. It is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.