This assignment asks you to write an analytical argument, focusing on the validity of one assertion chosen from assigned non-fiction reading. To illustrate some of the thinking skills involved, let's consider an assertion from one of this country's founding documents, The Declaration of Independance. It is an assertion that you've no doubt heard before, "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." Historically, this assertion is credited with establishing a new relationship between individuals and their governments. It asserts that the rights of individuals are theirs naturally, by birth, and do not depend upon governments for their existence. The role of government is to "secure" these rights, not grant them, and a government's legitimacy is based on how well it performs that role.

Most Americans, myself included, have a great deal of respect for this assertion, seeing it as extremely important in advancing individual freedom. Such respect, however, does not exempt the assertion from critical examination. Notice that it makes a claim for which no evidence is presented. Why not? Because the assertion is deemed to be "self-evident." Is this reasonable? Maybe. The overall argument of The Declaration has to start somewhere. Asking us to take some of its philosophy for granted helps the document as a whole to move on to more pressing political considerations--the exact reasons why the colonies are separating from Britain and establishing an independent nation.

More problematic is that the assertion has at least two somewhat undefined terms. What is meant by "all men"? At the time of The Declaration, slavery was still legal. Are some "men" therefore more equal than others? The signers seem to suggest so, creating another disjunction between philosophy and politics. Philosophically, the assertion appears to be universal, but who is included under its umbrella of "all men" is subject to political debate. Also, perhaps most ambiguously of all, what is meant by "the pursuit of happiness"? All men are not made happy by the same things, and suppose two ways of pursuing happiness conflict.

The authors of The Declaration of the Rights of Men and Citizens, who were trying to advance individual liberty in France, included a clarifying statement in their document. They asserted that "liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law." In other words, there will be "no limits" to the right to pursue happiness except those "determined by law." It will be "law" that decides where the boundaries between conflicting ideas of happiness lie. But isn't law something that is negotiated within governments through politics? Perhaps governments aren't so dispensible as The Declaration of Independence makes it appear.

So you see even honored assertions may be open to critical discussion. To brainstorm the assertion that you have chosen for your essay, attend a LARC 39A Workshop.