[jpetso]

> We should be able to arrive at some kind of consensus on what our moral rights our, through rational discourse.

In the commonly used sense of the term, the scope of morals by far exceeds what you'll get even reasonable people to agree upon. "Rational discourse" means that you need enough of an uncontroversial set of base facts that either party is willing to work with. I don't think we have enough of those to derive a single valid system of morals without injecting other, subjective, more controversial opinions in the process.

Say, you have a basic statement such as "All people should be equal", something that most can agree with. By itself, this isn't actionable, and won't determine how to handle a situation unambiguously. You could come up with a libertarian doctrine that all people should be given the same treatment regardless of their background or current situation, or you could come up with a socialist doctrine that disadvantaged people should get extra support to balance out unequal origins and misfortune. Or anything in between. None of these can be rationally discarded, because there's not enough source data to come to any conclusion to begin with. If you attempt to expand the set of source data, you will find many who disagree with you. That's why it's subjective.

That said, trying to distill what basic facts we do have, so that they can be worked with in a constructive fashion, is a commendable goal. Good luck!