The second paragraph of the Declaration continues: That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. This clearly is the very antithesis of the totalitarian belief. Those governments were not instituted to secure these individual rights for their people. Neither the Nazis nor the Japanese militarists nor the Fascists of Italy derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and their concentration camps and common graves are full of people who even dared to suggest that the people had any right to criticize let alone to alter or abolish, the existing regimes.
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About James Reston
James Reston was a 20th-century American journalist and newspaper editor. James "Scotty" Barrett Reston was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with The New York Times. Read more on Wikipedia →