[tpaine]

"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."

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Only if you are willing to collectively or individually die for those rights. Otherwise, you simply have no more than what someone wishes to give you.
38 going hot

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That was the beauty of the original ideas behind the Constitution.

No one questioned what authority established the rights of the citizens.

Now with the humanistic relativism of the Liberal and the Libertarian sects, anything goes.
Oh well, Satan was bound to eventually divert attention off of the true and living God and begin the demise of the greatest Union of peoples in human history.
39 bondserv

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Those words of our DOI parse just as well, and mean the same, if we eliminate the references to creators:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Men need no 'authorities' to establish our rights, Bondserv..

-- In effect, as Going Hot observes, -- our self-evident rights are established by being willing to die for them.

[going hot]

eggs ackley

(With apologies to freeper of same name)

[bondserv]

Men need no 'authorities' to establish our rights, Bondserv..

A bigger Gun always establishes rights.

Unless of course a people acknowledge a superior being whose truth's transcend any man's ideas of right and wrong.
Ala the United States Founding Fathers!

Many wish to change this with faulty logic and TORT lawyering from the NYU School of Law.