And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. Revelation 13:11
"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; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of
---great general principles,
---as well as a recital of certain specific grievances.
---It was never written to meet the exigencies of one particular time or people.
---No nation prior to this one had ever declared it as a principle good for all mankind that all men are created equal, or that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
None of the great nations of Europe ever taught or ever believed these precepts. They were born simultaneously with the American Republic.
They constituted her christening robe and her birthright, peculiarly her own, and the first infant cry of her national life.
That nation of the old world which has ever been the foremost in 
promulgating doctrines of freedom and liberty did not believe these things, for she it was who fought them.
---But the Declaration of Independence, with one simple yet sweeping statement, disowns, disclaims, and discards both the Roman and the medieval theories, and substitutes in their place a principle beyond comparison with them for its lofty and holy teachings.
Wrapped in these words was a new doctrine. Here was the
in prince or potentate or in a republican form of government. With the founders of this government it was not a question of what the nation was able to do, but contrariwise, what was right for the nation to do."
P.T. Magan