>>Something that recognizes freedom of speech, the right to assemble, the
>>right to vote, etc.--or, to put it in a way dear to you, the right to carry
>>a weep-on--as ours because we are human, not as privileges bestowed upon us
>>by the prerogatives of some Great Men?... Or something like that.
>
>i think that view still trips up. that is, we come to think of rights as
>something we simply have, rather than as something we have to forge through
>vigilance and constant struggle.
I just finished reading The Poverty of Philosophy, and as I wrote the above I kept thinking that Marx would be all over me for it. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
I used "recognizes" instead of, say, "enshrines" because if we are going to have a theoretical structure of government, like the Constitution why not have it articulate what we believe, and what we've achieved, in the present, rather than turning to an inviolable, inherited document, the primary virtue of which is that it's been around a long time? I don't expect the Constitution, or God, to give us those rights.
Eric