A good portion of the Declaration of Independence is about what people are entitled to, just for existing. Some of Jefferson's ideas are grandiose, discussing mankind as a whole…take the entire first sentence-slash-paragraph, for example:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them… (1)

This introduction isn't about America; it's about "human events." That means all humans. In addition, all of these humans are apparently entitled to "separate and equal station[s]." He literally uses the word "entitle." How does this introduction serve Jefferson's text? Why does he start out with this?

Of course, as we all know by now, people (a.k.a. mankind) have "certain unalienable Rights," including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (2); if a government isn't supporting those rights, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it" (4).

Often this doesn't happen, because "mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed," although "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government" (5).

Throughout the whole first half of the Declaration, Jefferson goes back and forth between specific references to the plight of the colonies and more sweeping claims about mankind as a species, to provide justification or evidence for why the colonies are right to feel mistreated. Their struggles with Britain are equated with the great struggles of the human race, of the downtrodden peoples of Earth.

What do you think—does this make Jefferson's reasoning for why the U.S. is declaring independence more convincing? What other effects do his references to "mankind" have on the reader?