>I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions.
he wanted the constitution to be re-written every 20 years--essentially every generation. rights don't change. that's why he didn't advocate the declaration be re-written every 20 years, and self-defense is built into the declaration.
"Existence, faculties, assimilation—in other words,
personality, liberty, property—this is man.
It is of these three things that it may be said, apart
from all demagogic subtlety, that they are anterior and
superior to all human legislation.
It is not because men have made laws, that personal-
ity, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is
because personality, liberty, and property exist before-
hand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I have
said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the indi-
vidual right to lawful defense.
Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one
of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his
property, since these are the three constituent or preserv-
ing elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered
complete by the others, and that cannot be understood
without them. For what are our faculties, but the exten-
sion of our personality? and what is property, but an
extension of our faculties?
If every man has the right of defending, even by force,
his person, his liberty, and his property, a number of men
have the right to combine together to extend, to organize
a common force to provide regularly for this defense."
-Bastiat