As an American I find this a very surprising interpretation, and I doubt anybody in my close social circle would agree with it either.
> 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,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
From your comment I wonder how many americans actually understand the history behind the constitution.
"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The Bill of Rights wasn't even part of the original constitution. The constitution was ratified in 1788, and the Bill of Rights was ratified in the form of amendments 1 through 10 in 1791.
I see this claim frequently, but I still judge it as "mostly false." Multiple states refused to ratify the constitution without the bill of rights. Without the bill of rights, the original constitution would have collapsed in less than ten years. The original constitution by itself was a piece of paper. The constitution together with the bill of rights are the foundation of our government.
There's still room for the Bill of Rights to only apply to Americans though, it is not clear whether they may make no law infringing on the rights of citizens or people.
In most American schools, for "social studies", US history is grades 8 and 9, while US government is grade 10. What did you study instead at these grade levels?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
That is why the one we are under is basically the 2nd revision of that.
From a philosophical perspective, though, I agree that Jefferson and others saw those rights as fundamental human truths. They were saying "people already have these rights, we promise the government won't infringe on them", not "the government grants people these privileges". (Of course, who qualified as "people" continued to be a matter of debate. And some of the "fundamental" rights later enumerated in the bill of rights, specifically the third, seem like pretty localized of-their-place-and-time concerns in retrospect.)
I think what prompted my comment and some of the other replies to pc86 was that the beginning of this comment thread was discussing some fairly specific applied legal concepts (e.g. "parallel construction") from a practical perspective of applied law. So replying to that thread with a point about political philosophy from an entirely different country is a bit of an odd tangent. Re-reading the comment, I do think that's how it was intended, but I think the context made it easy to misinterpret it as suggesting that Americans believe everyone in the world should abide by our political philosophy. Which is certainly regrettably true of some Americans, but I hope it doesn't describe anywhere close to most of us.
In general, that's almost certainly true. But there was also genuine disagreement between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the power of the central government and the Bill of Rights was essentially an effort to craft a compromise that could be ratified. Madison whittled down a long list of suggested rights and liberties to 12 amendments. Some of which (as in the first amendment, right to a trial, etc.) are fairly fundamental. Others of which, perhaps most of all the third as you say, fairly clearly grew out of Revolutionary War concerns.