Natural Law and Human Action

Why would Pierre Manent, long a defender of the modern nation state, launch a sustained critique of the modern doctrines of rights upon which those states have built their constitutional architecture? In Natural Law and Human Rights, Manent seeks to give an account of political action, and to revive an understanding of natural law as action's proper guide. Insofar as modern natural rights were born in a polemic against natural law, a critique of those rights doctrines is a necessary precursor to natural law's recovery. While Manent does not seek to destroy rights, he does seek to dethrone them, so as to recover the intelligibility of political action.