The Constitution wasn't written as a vehicle to grant us rights. We don't derive our rights from the constitution. Rather, in the minds of the Founders, human rights are inalienable—inseparable—from humans themselves. We are born with rights by simple fact of existence, as defined by John Locke and written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,' the Founders wrote. Humans are 'endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights....' These rights are clear and obvious, the Founders repeatedly said. They belong to us from birth, as opposed to something the Constitution must hand to us, and are more ancient than any government.
—Thom Hartmann
Step out of the way (Hirshfield)
It may be that originality is simply what you step out of the way of; it is what must come if the old ways are dropped, discarded like clothes.
Jane Hirshfield, from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
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