The unforgivable curses and the US Declaration of Independence

[Meredith]

No: HPFGUIDX 96650

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Albus Dell <albus696 at y...> 
wrote:
> From the US Declaration of Independence:
> 
> > That among these [rights which all people have] are
> > life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
> 
> I wonder if Rowling had this in mind when coming up
> with the unforgivable curses. The Avada Kedavra is
> obviously the violation of the first right; the
> Imperius curse is a violation of the second (a
> physical one - not a legal one, but the same idea);
> and someone under the Cruciatus curse is almost as
> unhappy as one can be!
> 
> Any thoughts on the matter?

The U.S. declaration of Independence based the three freedoms on John 
Locke's theory of civilization and government, which said every 
person has the right to life, liberty and property. Cruciatus doesn't 
show a correlation to property loss, although it can be argued that 
with any of the Unfogivable Curses a wizard can be coerced to give up 
his property, or have it forcibly taken. I'm sure Rowling is schooled 
in both Locke and American government, as she has allusions to norse, 
greek and roman mythology, shakespeare, european history, and even 
C.S. Lewis in HP, not to mention her attention to name meanings, many 
of which are Latin. However, I think the three unforgivables are 
meant to cover the range of all possibilities - that all three curses 
would destroy ANY right a human would have, since all other rights 
stem from those three (for example, in the US constitution the right 
to bear arms related to your right to property and to protect it - at 
least that was the original intent). Otherwise, why not just have one 
Unforgivable curse that everyone refers to as "the unforgivable" 
or "the curse-that-must-not-be-named"?

~Luckie Starr, who apologizes for rehashing the unforgivable 
discussion, but wanted to relate them to the topic at hand.