Their practical meaning is in their ability to sway people's ideas as to how they ought to vote. The abstract claim that persons of African descent have rights has certainly had practical consequences in this country's history.
Liberty as the forefathers saw it was not protected by rights
Of course not---rights are a definition of proper liberty.
I said that here in the United States 2003 the government regulates every aspect of our lives so debates about rights are completely abstract and thus have no meaning.
Yes, government regulations are getting worse all the time, because people don't know what's happening, and thus don't fight what they can't see.
Debates about Rights are not meaningless. Without offering evidence that the government is wrong to infringe upon our Rights, with people not even knowing what Rights are (as you've demonstrated) how can people correct the tyrannical actions of our government?
Rights are no more meaningless today than they were when the recognition of the Rights of Man founded our nation. Education in those Rights can return our nation's commitment to freedom.
However, you then say: "has sovereignty over any individual's actions" which is what you said. Because states have the power to regulate rights, and they do...
States do not have the power to regulate Rights.
Rights come from God, not from Man.
States are created by Man. Man cannot delegate a power to the State that he does not possess himself.
"... and you believe in states, by your construct you are the one exercing a socialist (ideological) world view."
I believe that civilization requires government.
Governments, however, do not have the authority to run roughshod over the Rights of Man. Those Rights, if respected by our leaders, give us Freedom, not socialism.
"... Liberty as the forefathers saw it was not protected by rights or the state, but by institutions which would be maintained and handed down through the generations. Rights are reflected in these insitutions..."
That's not true, and the proof is easy to find. Governments are to protect Rights, and governments are not expected to last forever, but are to be tolerated only as long as Rights are respected.
Declaration of Independence
"... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ..."
I will open up a new can of worms; do African fathers have a right as parents to exercise their cultural tradition of preforming clitorectomies on their baby girls?
You still don't understand what a Right is.
No, fathers do not have a "right" to perform clitorectomies, but the families in those countries do have that power. That is a learned behavior, not a Right.