What was Declared in the Declaration of Independence?

Often dismissed as declaring that the thirteen American colonies were tired of paying taxes to Britain and had a right to pursue some happiness, the Declaration of Independence is far more.

The Declaration opens with some polite fluff about explaining things to world oppinion, then fires the Big Guns:
"We hold these truths to be Self Evident" - the argument will not be based on "my grand-dad told me", but on plain, in your face, proof.

The First self evident truth: The church has been lying about the "Divine right of Kings" to treat others as property, rather, "All men are created Equal" and equally provided with unalienable Rights. To ensure understanding, a short-list of the best known rights are listed as examples

The Second self evident truth: The proper purpose of Government is not the aggrandizement of a King, but the securing of the unalienable Rights against infringement.
Since governments are created by the people to secure the Rights, the people have the right to replace any government that is destructive of those Rights.

Having stated that the Creation and Replacement of Governments is one of the Divinely Endowed Unalienable Rights, the document continues with the observation that this Right is rarely exercised because of the Cost.
The point is then made that when the cost in lives and property to throw off a despotic government becomes far less than the losses incurred by remaining under such government, the Right becomes, rather, the Duty to take action.

The next section of the document is a long list of charges against the government of Great Britain to show that the colonials were compelled by Divine Duty to replace the British government of North America with a government constituted to their best efforts as a defender of the unalienable Rights of all men.

The final section closes the argument with the formal Declaration and the signatures of those pledging "our Lives our Fortunes and our sacred Honor"

There are those who point to the pervasiveness of religious terms throughout the document to say that this was intended to be a "Christian Nation", but a reading of the document and their collected letters shows that the founders considered "Organized Religion", including the Anglicans, the Puritans and even the Mennonites, to be dishonest scoundrels, feeding off the people in the name of a Creator they knew not.

We are not a Nation under men of some Church, but a "Nation under God", not a nation ruled by clerics, not Protestant pastors, Catholic cardinals, Muslim Ayatollas nor Buddhist monks;
A nation where counties do not rule on state matters, where states do not rule on national matters, and where only the Most High sits as Judge on matters of our souls.

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