"The Revolutionary Basis of America
The 1999 class of Chinese students grasped—perhaps more than many Americans—the gift that America’s founders bequeathed to humanity. That human rights are self-evident, unalienable, and originated in individuals is a powerful idea that struck, as another student in that class put it, like “a lightning bolt across my long-closed mind.”
For the essay writer and many in his class, Jefferson’s immortal words were sacred: “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.”
Rose Wilder Lane, in her book The Discovery of Freedom, brilliantly explains the uniqueness of the American idea. From Lane’s work, the essay writer quoted: “This revolutionary basis is recognition of the fact that human rights are natural rights, born in every human being with his life, and inseparable from his life; not rights and freedoms that can be granted by any power on earth.”
https://fee.org/articles/what-happens-when-an-mba-student-raised-in-communist-china-reads-hayek/
The 1999 class of Chinese students grasped—perhaps more than many Americans—the gift that America’s founders bequeathed to humanity. That human rights are self-evident, unalienable, and originated in individuals is a powerful idea that struck, as another student in that class put it, like “a lightning bolt across my long-closed mind.”
For the essay writer and many in his class, Jefferson’s immortal words were sacred: “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.”
Rose Wilder Lane, in her book The Discovery of Freedom, brilliantly explains the uniqueness of the American idea. From Lane’s work, the essay writer quoted: “This revolutionary basis is recognition of the fact that human rights are natural rights, born in every human being with his life, and inseparable from his life; not rights and freedoms that can be granted by any power on earth.”
https://fee.org/articles/what-happens-when-an-mba-student-raised-in-communist-china-reads-hayek/