Theodore Beza vested the right of resistance not in the private individual but in the lesser magistrates — the constituted officers who stand between the sovereign and the subject — making revolt lawful without making it universal. François Hotman built his case from history, arguing in Francogallia that absolute monarchy was a corruption of France's older, better constitution. And the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, published under a pseudonym in 1579, grounded the whole structur

We ranked the five presidents who expanded the federal government further, faster, and more permanently than anyone else.

The series opener makes a single, startling claim: the truths the Declaration of Independence calls self-evident were not invented in Philadelphia. They were inherited — refined across more than two thousand years, in more than one civilization, by men who rarely knew one another. Jefferson himself said as much, naming Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, and Sidney as the “elementary books” behind the Declaration. This episode establishes that the Founders were readers before they were

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.