Natural rights, founding principles, consitution I am supposed to be trying to explain individual liberties and rights as a founding principle of...

Two
concepts are being conflated into one, which happens when figurative
language is used (e.g., "taken away") and used for so long and by so many that it is
forgotten that it is figurative. Since rights are not like a pair of shoes
that one dons or that one may or may not be permitted to don, they can not literally
be taken away as shoes can most decidedly be taken away by heartless (or maybe
desperate) individuals. In reference to rights and the United States Founding Documents,
"taken away" is a figurative for oppressed and/or violated. What
your professor is wisely asserting is that humankind has innate qualities of dignity and
humanity and honor that include the freedom to live under their own volition (though not harm
inducing volition, since harm violates a few rights on its own) without the brutality and
dehumanization and exploitation of tyrants or greedy mercenaries or other powerful and
destructive people or groups. In this sense, these rights are
not a negotiable social contract.

In another sense,
literal legal rights are a negotiable social
contract. Two examples are "We, the people ..." and Swedish health care. In the first
example, the groups included in the literal legal social construct of
rights as expressed in "We, the people ..." did not include,
women, children, slaves, and non-Christian immigrants, and possibly others. This is, in fact a
literal legal social construct that forms an agreement between people of a
society as to what literal legal rights may be had by whom (though it is
speaking of humankind's innate inviolate qualities of dignity, humanity,
honor etc, that are not a social
construct).

As legal rights, these may--upon a change in
the social agreement that results in a change in the social construct--be altered to include or
exclude those not previously specified. This is precisely what has happened with Constitutional
Amendments, new laws and Supreme Court rulings. On the other hand, no Constitutional Amendments,
laws or Supreme court rulings can ever alter the innate humanity and dignity and attendant
rights held by every person living--we have already established that these rights may be and are
violated and abused, but they can not be altered or disenfranchised.

The
second example of Swedish health care is a happy example of inclusion (as
opposed to the original exclusion of "We, the people ...") in a
literal legal social construct that specifies legal
rights that a social group has agreed to. Sweden has agreed that all
citizens--because of their innate, inviolate humanity and dignity--have the legal
right to any and all needed health care (and education, for that matter) without
restriction for any cause.

So, to understand these questions you ask, you
must be able to isolated and separate (not conflate) the two concepts of (1) innate human rights
and (2) legal rights that devolve to members of a society based upon legal documents that agree
to and specify the legal rights recognized within that society. For more
clarity, compare the legal social construct of health care rights for citizens in Sweden to the
legal social construct of health care rights for citizens in the United States (a political
"hot button" right now, I know, but a very clear example of the point I'm making
[though I'm not inviting a battle over policy by mentioning it]).