POPSOV Blog

Preamble to the United Nations Charter (1945)

NB: for the POPSOV Blog 'Great Moments in Popular Sovereignty'

The Charter of the United Nations (also known as the UN Charter) of 1945 is the foundational treaty of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization. The Preamble to the treaty reads as follows:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

• • to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

  • to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

  • to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

  • to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

• • to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

  • to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

  • to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

  • to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

Source: The United Nations. Citation from https://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/index.html. Image: The United Nations Declaration signed on New Year’s Day 1942.

The Gettysburg Address (1863)

NB: for the POPSOV Blog 'Great Moments in Popular Sovereignty'

The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863 (following the Battle of Gettsburg) is regarded as one of the 'best known speeches in American History'

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Source: Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows., Appendix B p. 290: "This is the only copy that ... Lincoln dignified with a title: 'Address delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg.', a rare full signature, and the date: 'November 19, 1863.' ..This final draft, generally considered the standard text, remained in the Bliss family until 1949." Image: The Bliss copy, on display in the Lincoln Room of the White House.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei (739) (1327) (1710)

NB: for the POPSOV Blog 'Great Moments in Popular Sovereignty'

Vox Populi, Vox Dei is Latin for "the voice of the people is the voice of God."

Originally referenced to the political advisor, Alcuin's (739) disquisition concerning protests of radical democracy among the people, and later re-propagandized in a Whig tract of 1709, the classical democratic principle of Rule of the People was distended in a revised edition: Vox Populi, Vox Dei : being true Maxims of Government.

Republished under the title of The Judgment of whole Kingdoms and Nations 1710, the most famous excerpt reads:

“There being no natural or divine Law for any Form of Government, or that one Person rather than another should have the sovereign Administration of Affairs, or have Power over many thousand different Families, who are by Nature all equal, being of the same Rank, promiscuously born to the same Advantages of Nature, and to the Use of the same common Faculties; therefore Mankind is at Liberty to choose what Form of Government they like best.”

Source: 'The judgment of whole kingdoms and nations, concerning the rights, power, and prerogative of kings, and the rights, priviledges, and properties of the people'. Image: ibid.

Πολιτεία, Politeia (380 BC)

NB: for the POPSOV Blog 'Great Moments in Popular Sovereignty'

The concept of the social contract was originally posed by Glaucon, as described by Plato in The Republic, Book II.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.

Source: The Republic, Book II. Quoted from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html. Image: Title page of the oldest manuscript: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Gr. 1807 (late 9th century).