CHAPTER+1.+Under+what+conditions+are+people+justified+in+revolting+against+their+government?

  CHAPTER 1. Under what conditions are people justified in revolting against their government?

Before we move on, please watch the video we put together to represent the American Revolution.

media type="youtube" key="rOgX-FVN8gg" height="525" width="660" align="center"

Now,

The fundamental condition that justify people's revolt against their own government is when the government neglects the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the people according to the Declaration of Independence. Yet at the same time, a revolution should take place when an overwhelming majority, preferably including all social classes, considers their life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be threatened.

// New Oxford American dictionary: Revolution - "A forcible overthrow of a government or a social order in favor of a new system." //

Some revolutions in history merely reflect one prominent group with their own perspective guiding a revolution. The Russian Revolution and the Chinese Communist Revolution, for example, represented the viewpoints of the factory workers and the peasants, respectively. Both of these Revolutions were against a wealthy, bourgeois class. As Karl Marx's //Communist Manifesto// suggests "All workers unite!". The American Revolution, however, differed in that the voices of all social classes were displayed, making their revolution even more justifiable. All social casses in American colonies were dissatisfied with the British rule and thus repelled.

The Declaration of Independence illustrates that, //"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."//

Ultimately, the definition of a revolution is when an overwhelming majority considers their lives, liberties, and the pursuits of happiness to be threatened and the American Revolution certainly falls under the definition as we will show with our remaining three chapters.