Funny, I thought one of the main the purposes of the Constitution was to protect and codify those pre-existing rights.
Which rights aren't protected by our laws?
I find your waving around the behavior of Nazi Germany and Russia unpersuasive.
Codification destroys rights by turning them into government granted privileges. In that sense, none of our rights are protected by our laws, because none of our laws acknowledge those rights, as rights. As such, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are perfect examples, because the legal process they followed is identical. The only thing that has saved us is the clash of that process with the actual, original, pre-14th Amendment Constitution. Otherwise the country would have fallen long ago. Completing that "transition" is the dream of the Left, and every Leftist politician.