Ever since the dawn of recorded history, people's minds have
been inculcated with the notion that government is the master
and the people are the servants. Hardly anyone, for example, has
questioned the notion that government officials have the
legitimate authority to manage the economy, or direct the
education of people's children, or to control religious
activity, or to decide what people can read or watch. It's just
been commonly accepted that government officials can do whatever
they want, especially in the best interests of society, and that
it is the role of the good, little, model citizen to submit and
obey in the service of the greater good of society. Then one day
in 1776 along came a Virginian named Thomas Jefferson who issued
a declaration that set that age-old notion on its head.
Jefferson suggested in the Declaration of Independence that
people had had it all wrong. It's the people who are masters and
it is government that is the servant. Every person, Jefferson
said, has been endowed with certai