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"In practice there isn't much difference between the Constitution granting rights and the Constitution protecting natural rights."

There's a HUGE difference. Liberty and equality are "self-evident" natural rights. But the Constitution protected *slavery*, until the 13th Amendment.

That does NOT mean that blacks born as slaves didn't have the rights to liberty and equality (equal protection of the laws). It's "self-evident" that they did. It's merely that the Founding Fathers screwed up, in that regard. Big time.

"Most Americans, including most SCOTUS justices, view the Constitution as a social contract that is the source of our rights, rejecting the theory of natural rights."

Most Americans, most definitely including the present judges of the Supreme Court, are irrational and/or ignorant. That's why we're in the mess we're in (the federal government massively violating the Constitution).

I don't know that we have any big disagreement, although I look at the present state of affairs with more optimism than you, apparently.

I thought the "social contract" types would have been jolted by the rise of Hitler to power, WWII and the Holocaust, done by proper procedure or agreement of the people, but grossly violative of the natural rights of millions. The only principled way to critique that regime was from a natural rights point of view.