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What Was Jefferson Thinking?

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I was reading a book called "the birth of plenty" (good book, says the emergence of prosperity is due to capital markets, scientific rationalism, transportation and communication, and property rights) when I came across an interesting snippet. Everyone knows The famous line "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but what I personally didnt know was the original quote was not from the founding fathers, it was from John Locke, whose actual quote was "life, liberty, and estate"

so why did Jefferson feel compelled to change "estate" to "pursuit of happiness" wouldn't estate be more condusive to the capitalist ideal, rather then "pursuit of happiness" which the looters and moochers have hid behind as an excuse to rob others of their wealth?

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I was reading a book called "the birth of plenty" (good book, says the emergence of prosperity is due to capital markets, scientific rationalism, transportation and communication, and property rights) when I came across an interesting snippet. Everyone knows The famous line "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but what I personally didnt know was the original quote was not from the founding fathers, it was from John Locke, whose actual quote was "life, liberty, and estate"

so why did Jefferson feel compelled to change "estate" to "pursuit of happiness" wouldn't estate be more condusive to the capitalist ideal, rather then "pursuit of happiness" which the looters and moochers have hid behind as an excuse to rob others of their wealth?

I'm not a scholar in this area but I have read that Jefferson included the word 'property' in the first draft of the Declaration but removed it because of the slavery issue. Slaves were considered property and the issue was so contentous that many of the founders didn't want to risk not having unanimous Colonial support for the war. So they opted for a more pragmatic approach. Its a shame. Having the word 'property' or 'estate' in the founding documents might have provided another protection against the spread of socialist ideas.

Also, it is interesting to note that some US states have the word 'property' in their state constitution.

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I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but I got it from my high school government teacher. He claimed that the founding fathers generally had wealth and wanted a system that protected it; however, they knew that if they were overly explicit about "keeping their property" many citizens may view it as a continuation of the aristocracy from Europe. Wanting to distance themselves from this misinterpretation, while still making a strong statement for freedom, they included "pursuit of happiness" instead of property.

Of course, this teacher was very liberal, so I don't know if any of this is revisionist history. He tended to use "framers" instead of "founding fathers," and other similar things... Perhaps someone else has heard this elsewhere to verify or discredit it?

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