Rights are a human concept, and thus we bestow the rights on ourselves. Generally we do this via society/government. So, as our founding people thought, certain rights should be guaranteed by the government. The life liberty and pursuit of happiness part was just oratory; the real rights are spelled out in the constitution and the bill of rights. "Entitlement", used pejoratively, is a concept made up by the majority, for when minorities want the same rights as they have.

I think it's helpful to act as if rights exist, but I don't see any evidence for any objective existence of theirs. At best, I think you could say that rights are a product of social contract.

I feel entitled to lefts.

I think of 'rights' as those aspects to our existance which is innate to our being. We have the right to behave as human beings because we are born without a choice in the matter. So bound by our construct, we have a right to conduct ourselves as we are genetically inclined.

Entitlement comes only after we have contributed something of value to a collective and are due, or need, recompense by the collective.

We have a right to our nature, and are entitled to as much as we are willing to contribute (which is not to say you'll get either).

Well, that's what I think.

I think this sums up rights fairly well:

"...the people have only as much liberty as they have the inteligence to want and the courage to take." - Emma Goldman

Whatever rights the people have they first demanded and then fought for, at great cost of human life, and took great courage to obtain. In short, "we the people" bestow the rights upon ourselves. That seems like the whole point of the Declaration, no?

Jefferson wrote it into the first lines:

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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

"deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Rights derive from the people. When enough people see an injustice and demand action against it, a new right is born. Well, not exactly...usually years of struggle ensue, followed by violence and craziness...but then the new right gets forced down the throat of the government.