The elite politicians of that time knew that land was more valuable than happiness, and thus they took it upon themselves to restrict land privileges to those already owning land: rich, white men. These supposed inalienable rights were not for everyone; they were for citizens made eligible by the original Constitution. The other citizens: "those bound to service Indians (and) three-fifths of all other persons- were not represented, not to mention women and children. This document is the foundation of America, "the home of the free-, and yet it is one of its greatest hypocrisies. It took a couple centuries to iron out its fundamental kinks; the original ten amendments in the Bill of Rights and the thirteenth, fourteenth,.
fifteenth and twentieth amendments qualified the rest of society as legitimate, right-bearing citizens. Everyone is pretty much equal now, at least according to the Constitution (McClenaghan, pg. 726).
After the Constitution was ratified, the founding fathers decided that in addition to protecting their new government, they would also protect its citizens. They implemented the Bill of the Rights and set in motion one of the most revolutionary acts of its kind. It granted colonists freedoms they had never experienced, and set the precedent that individual and inalienable liberties were to be respected by the state at all cost. The first amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees "the freedom of speech-, freedom "of the press-, "the right to peaceably assemble-, and makes a promise, by Congress, that they will not honor one religion over another (McClenaghan, pgs. 736-739).
Among others are the right to bear arms, protection from "unreasonable searches and seizures-, and a number of other criminal and civil rights designed to protect the common man from himself and his government. These amendments were designed to protect rural communities from experiencing tyranny and unjustified acts against them, as many of them had experienced under the command of King George.
