As I read Christopher Hitchens' memoir today, Hitch 22, I came across a section of text that I found to be distracting and beautifully written. He was writing in relation to becoming an American citizen.The documents he speaks of, are known as the Constitution of the United States and other governmental papers, which lay out the the idea of a free people's nation. He follows this by talking about the evolution of the amendments over many decades, from the 13th all the way through to the 22nd. 

"For a writer to become an American is to subscribe of his own free will to a set of ideas and principles and to the documents that embody them in written form, all the while delightedly appreciating that the documents can and often must be revised, so that the words therefore constitute, so to say, a work in progress."

-Hitch 22, pg.259