(08-08-2022, 03:50 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote:

(08-07-2022, 03:38 PM)mikesez Wrote: Here's the part you seem to like:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

And heres the next sentence:
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

So as long as the government in power has "the consent of the governed" it would be wrong for you to attempt to "alter or abolish" it.  At the time those words were written, consent existed in a complex and contradictory mess of pledges and charters.  But now we have voting.  The person or idea that wins the election has the consent of the governed, and the one who tries to toss the election result, as Trump tried to, is only inviting further chaos and civil war.  We can make a list of people who tried to stay in power despite losing popular elections.  Nicholas Maduro is a recent example.  Vladimir Lenin is a more distant one.  Is that the company you would keep?

That bolded part only works on behalf of the governed if the government isn't corrupt. They're bought and paid for by lobbyists, special interest groups and big corporations and that's who they derive their powers from, not us. The only way we give them power is by voting for them and we don't have much of a say in that either in the sense that we can only vote for those who run and most of the time we don't even agree with them but vote anyway so we feel like we have a say in the matter.