>Rights, to the extent they exist at all, are necessarily inherent properties of individuals.

What's sad is that there's a formulation that's actually correct. Rights are an inherent property of societies (or stable ones, at least). Note that I'm saying rights in an abstract sense, not necessarily any specific set of rights. Not every society will value the same things the same way.

>E.g. If the majority decides black people are subhuman and therefore have no rights, the majority is most certainly not correct about that, because rights are not defined by the majority opinion.

So it's an objective fact that they're incorrect? I.e. they can be shown to be incorrect without having to ask anyone's opinion? Okay, prove it.

>The U.S. Declaration of Independence put it like this:

That's an opinion. It's perfectly fine to think these things are so obvious they don't need to be justified, but I don't agree that that's true, even if I subjectively hold the same opinion.