I refer to my post 33. Was I correct (I am not American, so wasn't sure) in my assumptions?
The enlightenment philosophers recognized the universality of rights but also recognized that governments violated them all the time. This poses a considerable dilemma and was that, I think, what led to the still revolutionary idea of a government limited to specifically enumerated powers. The true genius of the Bill of Rights is it did not grant rights to anyone but forbade the government from infringing them. This distinction is generally lost on the current generation of the publicly schooled.
I suppose, like all ideas that allow the exceptional individual to rise above the mean, it was too utopian a vision to last. Now even so called conservatives have effectively abandoned the idea of inalienable rights and want the government to have the power to decide who has what privileges.