The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to ""create"" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
quote by William J. Brennan, Jr.

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Dont You Think It's Time?
children have rights,
women have rights.
lovers have rights.
people of all religions,
and even atheists have rights.
people of all colors,
speaking every language have rights.
trees and rivers have rights.
cats and dogs have rights.
cattle have rights,
homeless people have rights.
prisoners have rights.
democrats and republicans have rights,
even socialists have rights.
the jobless have rights,
old people have rights...
and the hungry have
the right to be fed!
damnit! dont you think it's time?
poem by Eric Cockrell

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Equal Rights,2011
equal rights to live,
equal rights to love.
equal rights to believe,
to speak out, to stand up
and be counted.
equal rights to work,
equal rights to study.
equal rights to build.
equal rights to profess faith,
equal rights to pray.
equal rights to give...
equal rights to live,
equal rights to love!
poem by Eric Cockrell

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Outside Of The Loop
With a making of their own choices,
And the following done of their beliefs...
Why are those outside of the loop,
Blamed for infringing upon their rights?
Their rights to do what?
Hit their heads up against bricks walls?
Or...
Their rights to have no insight,
For the building of them...
That now has them stalled in anguish.
Why do they accuse others,
For the making of their intended decisions?
And why is it these folks can not see,
The forest overflowing with trees.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

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But today, government is taking those rights from us, pretending that it gives us our rights. Indeed, those rights come from God, and it was recognized throughout our history as such.
The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights.
quote by Potter Stewart

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Racism Poem - Where Racism matters
i live in a country
multi racial in nature
where certain communities
enjoy special rights
the politicians keep asking
why there is racial polarisation
well, if i have special rights
i will make sure i really
get the best deal of it all
i will not be a stupid fool
or even modest
no two way about it
that includes telling others
to be aware that they do
not have special rights
drawing the line doubly clear
just in case they
infringe on these rights
rights to everything special
housing, education,
medication, career advances
etc, etc, etc
and of course
i would make
every citizen aware
they are living in a society
where racism matters
because it is a matter
of life and death
for those with special rights
and of course for those
without the rights to
keep decently quiet about it
or else these special rights
could mean the rights
to take away things
dearest to them
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo

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How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed.
quote by Auberon Herbert

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The whole of the Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
quote by Albert Gallatin

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The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.
quote by David Boies

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The bill neither confers nor abridges the rights of anyone but simply declares that in civil rights there shall be equality among all classes of citizens and that all alike shall be subject to the same punishment.
quote by Lyman Trumbull

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Neither James Madison, for whom this lecture is named, nor any of the other Framers of the Constitution, were oblivious, careless, or otherwise unaware of the words they chose for the document and its Bill of Rights.
quote by Diane Wood

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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And what sort of philosophical doctrine is thi - that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others.
quote by Auberon Herbert

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The rights of the weak are not weaker rights, but are completely equal to the rights of the strong.
quote by Dionigi Tettamanzi

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Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.
quote by Thomas Sowell

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Girls Have Rights Too
Girls must have the undeniable rights to speak,
And the God-given rights to choose and pick.
Girls must have the rights to be educated,
To be respected and to be protected.
Girls are human beings too;
Girls must have all the rights too.
Girls must have the rights to fight
For respect, comfort and decency.
Girls like boys are bright,
Girls must be able to taste the fruit of equality.
Girls are people too,
Girls are wonderful too.
Education is the light at the end of the tunnel,
And ignorance is the moon at the bottom of the funnel.
Education is the hope that triggers better opportunities,
It is also the antidote that defeats all sorts of disease.
Therefore, girls must have the rights to be educated,
To be protected and to be respected.
poem by Hebert Logerie

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Against Their Human Rights
How many times have I heard them say
it’s against his human rights
when a killer goes to court?
Hey, but what about the victim
and his or her family.
Don’t they have human rights too?
Is it only the killers who have human rights?
It really makes you wonder.
They commit a crime against
someone innocent in our society.
Then you get some idiot
starts shouting their punishment
is against their human rights.
Now what would happen if that idiot
lost a family member to some killer?
Would they still be shouting
and waving banners about his human rights?
I sincerely doubt it;
they’d probably say like a lot of us
that the killer has no human rights.
They forfeited them the day
they took someone’s life.
We may forgive them
for what they do,
but they must still take the punishment
the Courts of the land hand down.
13 February 2008
poem by David Harris

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The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
quote by James Madison

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Human rights in Islam are human rights in the light of Islam, Islam as the outward medium through which its believers attain their true value, through which is realized the right to right(s) and the right to truth.
Mohammed Allal Sinaceur in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights: Islamic Tradition and Human Rights (1986)

Submitted by Simona Enache
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It is unfortunate that Americans are no longer aware of what the constitution says and what their rights are. Because of that, we are often very passive about what happens when the government violates those rights.
quote by James Bovard

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
quote by Thomas Jefferson

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