Bill of (granted?/protected?) Rights

In an informal poll of friends and acquaintances as to the purpose of the Bill of Rights, I found that most people believed these amendments granted specific rights to citizens. I found that only rarely did people use language that described the Bill of Rights as a document protecting unalienable human rights from acts of Congress. Yet the language of the founding documents makes it clear that a chief concern of the framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights was to protect the rights of citizens from the power of government. The Declaration of Independence is absolutely clear about the derivation of the rights outlined in the Constitution and the first 10 amendments:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. . .

These rights therefore are basic human rights, and the role of government is to secure and protect them, but never to grant them. While the founders clearly saw the importance of a strong federal government in securing an environment where basic human rights could be protected and flourish, they were equally concerned about the propensity of governments, once established, to begin to limit the rights of citizens. The ringing tone of the first five words of the First Amendment could not make this point any clearer: "Congress shall make no law. . ."

In every discussion of the legitimate role of federal government it is important to remember that the framers of our government were as concerned about the tendency of any government or institution to overreach its power over the lives of the governed as they were concerned about protecting the free exercise of unalienable human rights from threats both foreign and domestic.