>> Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT
> This is semantically vacuous verbiage. Rights have no meaning unless you have a system of human organization (e.g. a government) that allows those rights to be enforced and respected.
The OP is clearly being sloppy with their word usage (and their all-caps usage), but I think what they may be trying to say is that the constitution generally prohibits the government from doing something, rather than granting an individual the right to do it.
For example, the first amendment doesn't say you have an affirmative right to free speech, just that "Congress shall make no law .. abridging the freedom of speech". Most constitutional "rights" are actually rules prohibiting the government from doing something (e.g., prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures).
On a practical level, the distinction may seem semantic, but there are important moral implications: all people inherently born free, and government/society restricts that freedom. Some of those restrictions are more acceptable than others, and that's what the constitution tries to delineate. If it was the reverse (i.e., the government granted you rights), then it would imply you were not free to do them in the first place.
Although the two approaches are similar on a practical level, the former approach emphasizes freedom to a greater degree.