...While the Declaration may be linked in the popular imagination with notions of unfettered freedom and autonomy, in reality, the Declaration is greatly concerned with relationships, interrelationships, mutuality, and obligations.[1] It conceives of individuals and states as positioned among relationships that involve ethical and legal obligations, requiring honor and respect.[2] Moreover, these relationships are governed by preexisting, inalienable natural rights and justice. No one may justly declare independence from that higher law.[3] A government may not do so to tyrannize its citizens. A citizen may not do so to unjustly rebel. Notably, in its articulation of these rights and relationships, the Declaration speaks of dependence on or interdependence with several specific entities.
First, while engaging in social and political initiative, the Declaration expresses a sense of humble human dependence on divine providence for assistance. In its closing sentence, it asserts that the representatives act with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” ...
Second, the Declaration stresses empathetic, energetic dependence on one another. In its first sentence, the Declaration speaks of the people of all thirteen colonies as being “one people.” In the second paragraph, they are referred to as “the People,” in the last paragraph as “the good People.” Most explicitly, in the final sentence of the Declaration, the signers “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” ...
Of course, while the Declaration articulates and models interdependence in this way, where each citizen depends on others but also has a corollary responsibility to contribute to society, this is not to negate the strong current of individual initiative and freedom constitutive of the United States....
Third, the Declaration emphasizes the dependence of government on both the just exercise of power and on the consent of the governed. In other words, government is dependent on its relationship with the governed—its treatment of individuals and its respect for rights—for both legitimacy and survival....
Fourth, the Declaration recognizes international obligations, within an inevitable context of international relationships....