Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness Essay

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness - Essay Example He had a strong vision for the United States of America to this end and envisioned a country in which respect for the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was the order of the day. No wonder, his draft of the Declaration of Independence stated, We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. (Boyd 438) The independence of the United States has seen many changes to the way life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been treated. While the citizens of the U.S. enjoy these three natural rights to a greater extent than they did before independence, the country is yet to fully realize Jefferson’s dream for the country. This paper will analyze the extent to which the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are respected in the U.S. today. Before engaging in a discourse on the subject of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is important that the three subjects (life, liberty, and happiness) are defined. Life basically is the characteristic that living things have and that non living objects do not have as noted by Alberts (45). In other words, it is what distinguishes objects that have self-sustaining processes from those that lack them. Biologically, living objects or organisms have the capacity to grow, reproduce, respond to stimuli, maintain homeostasis and metabolize (Alberts 47). On the other hand, non-living objects have no capacity to perform these processes. When life is taken off an organism, the organism is considered to be dead or non-living. Liberty, on the other hand, is the quality that one enjoys when they can personally control their actions as noted by Westbrooks (134). In other words, liberty has a lot to do with