the most modern theory, just as if someone today believed in the “end of history” for example.

It is well known to researchers that Thomas Jefferson and those who worked with him borrowed the terminology of the Declaration of Independence from the ideas of English philosophy, especially John Locke, and from the founders of the ideology of the French revolution such as Rousseau and Montesquieu. At that time, the idea of natural law and natural rights was in vogue.

The origin of the problem for them and other social philosophers was the lack of a doctrine and law on which Western thought, which aspired to freedom from “ecclesiastical theocracy,” might build, and to which it might refer for judgment. This lack caused them to invent philosophical bases on which to construct. (¬1) A comparison is in order at this point, between the Islamic World possessed (beyond practical experience) a great legacy of revealed texts and explanatory legal codes which carefully defined universal moral truths and provide detailed laws governing human interactions six centuries before the promulgation of what the English call “the Magna Carta. Europe did not seriously attempt to emulate Islamic Law or even borrow from it, until the Napoleonic Code of 1804, that is, a generation after the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

To clarify this we will take an example from the values that you mention, which can be summed up in two words: “freedom and equality;” two old slogans, your discussion of which, contains nothing new. Which, moreover, were not the invention of the Founders. More importantly, these two values cannot possibly be derived from the vague principle of natural law in pure logic, let alone in the real world. Similarly, a little deep thought shows that they are contradictory –not complimentary- values. Here lurks the danger, as the events which transpired after the French Revolution (the revolution which clearly exalted these two slogans in the West) clearly confirm. For this reason the world historian Toynbee says:

“Human history may be summed up as a struggle between these two opposing principles: the principle of freedom and principle of equality.”

Since man is unable to define the limits between these two opposing principles, or rather, between the freedom of each party in the branches of human relationships (governor and governed, husband and wife, one state and another, minority and majority, etc.), and since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been able only to provoke a new debate of the problem (from its proclamation until now its interpretation has been disputed, and most totalitarian and violent regimes unabashedly describe themselves as democratic.) Quotes such as Martin Luther King’s about the “arc of justice” is most like describing water as “water.” Similarly, the letter’s quotation of Augustine is exceeded in eloquence by the quote in Gospel of one who is better than and antedates Augustine, Christ –peace be upon him- but it is only an ideal for ethical guidance. For this reason, there is no alternative but for all of humanity to return to an absolute detailed, universal source, or to borrow the phrase of Duguit, the Dean of French jurists:

“It is not possible for man to legislate for man. Rather, that is possible only for an unseen absolute power beyond the power of all mankind.”