Comparing Paine's Declaration Of Independence And The Constitution

The Enlightenment thinkers deserve due credit for creating the foundational building blocks of American government. Though the philosophers wrote their documents in different times, locations, and periods, their main ideas unify together as a masterpiece. Their issues of balancing power, handling the army, ensuring basic freedoms, and guaranteeing democracy are specifically addressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Were it not for these wise, intelligent, and brilliant thinkers, history could be extremely different today. The people who created these vital ideas endured various problems throughout history. However, instead of letting the problem slide by without solution, they devised blueprints to solve it. John Locke, for example, desired to convince the public that the Glorious Rebellion was indeed justified (Unknown, 2013). Thus, he produced the Second Treatise of Civil Government. Interestingly, Locke did not write this to solely defend the Rebellion: he also wished to explain his ideas for a more civilized society based on natural …show more content…
He also claimed that the purpose of government is to restrain the evil of man. Paine uses similar ideas from Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, in defense of natural rights, societal government, and the natural shortcomings of government. Paine greatly influenced the support for the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Declaration in his writings. Essentially, Common Sense is the foundational work for both of those documents. Without his works, one cannot be sure how much support the patriot movement would have received, and whether any of the previous documents could achieve positive feedback. In fact, Paine received so many sales of his pamphlet that the number of readers would be equivalent to the people who watch the Super Bowl today (Unknown,