Subject: Re: Here's one for the ATHEIST board
Many people (including Dope) use the term to encompass inherent entitlements that all humans have, and which it is always wrong for a government to deny to a people.

However, different people have differing ideas about what rights other people have. Some (possibly even on this board) don't think people should have the right to marry people of the same sex/gender. Within my lifetime it was actually illegal to marry someone of a different ethnicity (so you and I would be in trouble if Loving wasn't on the books).

To get more modern, many people think you don't have a right to healthcare. It is a privilege of the monied classes. Others strongly disagree. We may get near unanimity about slavery -though apparently some xians think it wasn't that bad since it's god-approved in EX21-, but many other topics we would get wild disagreement. So, in the end, government grants (or not) those rights. They can come from nowhere else, and are really just an agreement within society (democracy) or the whim of a single leader (dictator).

Or the 2A. We have that right because of the 2A, not because of something "inalienable". There is vehement disagreement about whether that right exists on it's own. I don't think it should exist, but the Constitution grants it; even if I think recent interpretations are highly partisan and wrong.

Instead, they were claiming the existence of rights outside of the formal British system, and because the British were violating those rights, rebellion was justified.

Yes, while avoiding "god-given" wording. As I recall, it was mostly the wealthy landowners that were unhappy. They managed to get the common peasant whipped-up, but in the end very little had changed for the peasant. The well-to-do ended up with more say about their affairs, and -as I recall- didn't have any income or property tax (instead relying on tariffs). They didn't like King George's taxes.