Rights and Germans

Disclaimer: this post has nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Haven't written a post in a long while, but something I came across today prompted the urge to get something off my chest. I was at the Generalkonsulat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland on 49th and 1st, and I picked up a pamphlet about Germany. On the last page on religion, the first sentence read "The Grundgesetz (basic law) of the Federal Republic of Germany grants Germans freedom of religion". In the "history" section, there was another short blurb on "the majority [of the people] were poor peasants who did not own land and had no rights". As much as I hope it was a typo, I just don't think anything was lost in the translation.
Things like these show a profound misunderstanding of what rights are, and point to one of the things that made American political thought (at least at its founding) fundamentally different from the rest of the world.
What are rights? Rights are naturally existing ethical principles that are pre-requisites for the existence of man qua man in a social context. They do not come from a mythical creature with a warm and fuzzy variety of omnipotence nor do they come from the divinity of kings; and they sure as hell don't come from some hodge-podge of crooked politicians and backroom bureaucrats. Get this straight in your head right now: Rights precedes government and precedes the law. If a government is supposed to justify its existence by fulfilling the function of a protector of rights, then how can the government be the grantor of those rights? The Bill of Rights doesn't grant anyone the right to free speech, it explicitly protects it. There's an oft forgotten clause that states that any power not explicitly granted to the Federal government is reserved for the state and the people. What was stated in the pamphlet about Germany was the exact opposite of this very principle. It implies that people have no rights unless the government explicitly grants them. And if a person does not have basic rights without the approval of the government, it means that his/her very existence is dependent on the sanction of Bundestag. And when the whim of the mob changes, rights that were "granted" to you can be taken away quicker than you can say "Dem Deutschen Volke".
Our only hope is that everyone gain a clear understanding of rights so that any government that claims to have the power of sanction over the fundamental rights of its citizens will be made to quake with fear.