Far from ignoring our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property, they are at the core of my comments. If we have "inherent natural rights," the only way to make them meaningful in ways that can be applied to ordinary lives. To argue that one "natural right" is an "inalienable" right to life secured by the Constitution makes it unconstitutional for a state to execute legally any individual for whatever cause. Such is not unconstitutional. How do I know that? Read the Supreme Court's rulings on the death penalty -- unconstitutional at one point, constitutional now. You may reply that Supreme Court rulings merely make some conduct "legal," not "right" or even constitutional. It's your inalienable right, I suppose, to hold whatever views you prefer but you have no inalienable right to determine what the Constitution means. We have chosen a process for that, framed by the Constitution and continually tested, both in politics and law. It's that process I defend.
Similarly, "liberty" can be construed by an individual to mean that he has the inalienable right to do as he pleases -- run over pedestrians on public streets, shoot his neighbor, burn down city hall. He doesn't. There is lawful conduct and unlawful conduct, both of which in our country are determined by the processes of a representative democracy as framed by the Constitution.
The same is true of the rights to property. An individual may interpret that to mean that the community has no constitutional authority to pass a law against his factory spewing toxic chemicals into a public stream. Toxic chemicals were not mentioned in the Constitution, he might say, and therefore no law one way or the other can be made concerning them. Not so. How do I know that? That and similar disputes have been played out in the political and judicial processes which, through a representative democracy, define "Constitutional rights" at any particular time. Spew toxic chemicals into a public stream and you may be arrested, tried, and punished.