Talking about a guy I should talk about more Algernon Sydney in general when we think about the founders and old revolutionaries names like Jefferson, Otis, Adams, and others, but the name they heard from were names like Locke, Montesquieu, and Sydney. I'll talk about some of the primary ways that Algernon Sydney influenced the American revolutionaries and their views and their thoughts and actions, things like natural rights, government by consent, and the right to Revolution.
The American Revolution was something that happened before the War for Independence, before the shot heard around the world, before the British gun control program came in that really kind of escalated things that led to the Declaration of the causes and the necessity of taking up arms in July of 1775. It was a change of the principles and the viewpoints of the people going back to as John Adams wrote, 1761 and James Otis Jr.'s point that "an act against the Constitution is void. Government is not the one that holds authority over itself that determines the extent of its own power. "If power flows from the people," as George Mason and so many others told us. When government violates the rules, "it isn't up to the government to tell us whether or not it violated those rules."
