culture blurb...America comes from 3 great ideas

from Maggie Gallagher:
"The first is the idea of truth itself -- not only in the Declaration's insistence that we as a people hold certain moral truths to be self-evident, but the entire structure of the Declaration, its very reason for being, is testament to this faith in reason (and in the reasonableness of faith).

The second great American idea is grounded in the first: The rights of the people are prior to government. Each of us is "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Bill of Rights later adopted is thus not a gift of the government, but a statement of facts about human beings that the government is obligated to recognize. The Supreme Court's recent opinion recognizing that every American retains a right to keep and bear arms -- an individual right -- is only the latest in a long line of acknowledgements in which the Bill of Rights is so grounded. The whole case for human rights, and the liberties that stem from them, rests on the idea that government has no power to create rights, or to take them away, only to acknowledge or to abuse them.

The third great American idea is also related to the first two: There is a power greater than government (whether king or congress), and ultimately our rights rest securely in our equality before our creator."