Why Our Nation Is Disintegrating

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229211

America was founded on two basic principles, when you boil it all down:

• Each person has unalienable rights, among them life, liberty (including the freedom to choose where to be, when and how, along with ownership of property necessary and incidental to that choice) and the pursuit (but not guarantee of attainment) of happiness.
  
• Each person has the right to expect that the law shall apply equally to all, so as not to prejudice outcomes for or against any individual (or group) predicated on who they are rather than their conduct.  Conduct, voluntarily engaged in, is a proper reason for people to choose to associate or not with an individual or group.

The rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, along with the Amendments that came after it, are about recognizing and protecting those two principles.  They flow from a belief that it is the inherent property of being human that endows one with these rights; no government and no person can grant them, because you cannot grant to another that which you first do not rightfully possess.