Today, Dec. 15, is the anniversary of the 1791 ratification of our Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution, and the Rule of Law it enshrines.

The Bill of Rights was inspired by three remarkable documents: John Locke’s 1689 thesis, “Two Treatises of Government,” regarding the protection of “property” (in the Latin context, proprius, or one’s own “life, liberty and estate”); the Virginia Declaration of Rights authored by George Mason in 1776 as part of that state’s Constitution; and, of course, our Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson.

Read in context, the Bill of Rights is both an affirmation of innate “unalienable rights” of man, and a clear proscription upon any central government infringement of those rights. As oft trampled and abused as the Bill of Rights is by those who’ve sworn an oath “to Support and Defend” our Constitution, most notably “judicial supremacists,” or the “despotic branch” as Jefferson called the judiciary, Patriots must remain ever vigilant in order to sustain our rights.