Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

Freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together.

That transcendent order - the higher or natural law, if you will - was captured most forcefully in our Declaration of Independence, of course, which states plainly that we are born free and equal, with equal moral rights to plan and live our own lives - even, by implication, when doing so offends others.

If our rights come and go according to the winds of political fashion, then we live not under the rule of law but under the rule of men. Indeed, it was precisely to secure the former that our Founders wrote a constitution in the first place.

Life, faculties, production - in other words individuality, liberty, property - that is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.