I am indebted to Ayn Rand ^footnote1 in several ways, foremost in learning how to derive the fundamental values of life, truth and freedom from my nature as a human. She also showed me how to arrive at a political basis for government, as enshrined in the United States' Declaration of Independence.

However, my politics are best expressed by Article I, section 1 of the 1875 version of the Constitution of the State of Nebraska.

This document took the wording of the Declaration of Independence and made what was for the time an astonishing leap - from the ideas that all people may be referred to as "men", that they are necessarily the result of an act of creation, and that they have rights because of an endowment by their creator - to language beyond gender, nation, Christian heritage or for that matter even species and planet, that would be right at home on a plaque in a vessel of the fictional Starfleet.

Regrettably, in my opinion, this Article was in 1988 amended to add comparatively parochial language enshrining the right to bear arms for various purposes. But in 1875, it read:

All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights, and the protection of property, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.