I have often stated that our concept of Rights is a cultural one. I think this can be best explained with a parallel.
The laws of science, are not laws in a very real sense. They cannot dictate what happens in the real world, they are interpretations of what man sees in the world.
By the same token then, when Thomas Jefferson wrote about the new American culture and its belief that all men are created equal, Etc., he was reflecting the culture’s observation based belief of what is.
It is at this point that a certain amount of pragmatism enters my argument, with the observation that cultures that recognize those basic rights have a tendency to do better in the world than those that do not.
I will expand on this as time allows