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.

You give Dope too much credit. :p In my minds eye we were dealing with a King and a Parliament. We aren't represented in the Parliament. So we had certain fictions so we can discuss rights among ourselves and establish them outside of a King or a Parliament. No one thinks the states of nature discussed were meant to represent the actual state of nature, but they do allow a process of thought to be built, a scaffolding to be erected and discussed. Rights spring from nature or were God given, not granted. But after it's stripped down, the one solid thing we can point to is that we agreed to it, we ratified it, and that agreement is very real. So I realize how the scaffolding was built (in my own way), the arguments, etc., but I also realize The Constitution was the least worst that we could agree on, but we agreed.

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