The main significance of the article is that it indicates how desperate the Cato crowd is to try to justify natural rights without God.
The article is an obvious failure, just as every effort after David Hume laid down his challenge has been a failure. The claim that Darwinism brings something extra to the table beyond classical liberalism itself is also wrong.
Unfortunately for Cato, you can’t have natural rights in any meaningful sense without God. But they don’t want God because Christianity is so declasse in their inside the Beltway circles, and Christianity interferes with the pursuit of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”
Even Murray Rothbard knew that this was an enormous problem, and I was in a meeting years ago at Harvard when Nozick rubbed Murray’s face in it. All Murray could say was that libertarians needed more philosophical firepower.
Secular libertarians can’t get past this problem, which is a critical weakness the left exploits. This is why Cato-style libertarians ultimately find themselves making utilitarian arguments.
Great stuff!