I don't think a majority necessarily carries power. The uber rich and intelligence agencies carry far more power than any mass of citizens.
b) Elites exert control by persuasion; they control the discourse, they organize larger movements, &c. There are still limits to what popular opinion will go along with.
c) Intelligence agencies are, in most rich democratic countries, not a major lever of political power. Government economic institutions, police, courts, and the like are much more influential in both day-to-day lives and in shaping popular conceptions of the "rules of the game".
The right to life (in a negative, the government-shouldn't-take-it-away) is quite universally recognized - in cases where it's violated, defenders of that violation work very hard to craft a strong justification.
The right to free speech (again, in a negative the-government-shouldn't-take-it-away) sense is also a fundamental part of political discourse.
The right to private religious practice is broadly fundamental, though the right to religious practice of various sorts in the public domain (as well as the definition of that public domain) is hotly disputed.
Notably, the right to certain social goods are "fundamental" in parts of Western Europe (e.g. healthcare in the UK), but very much are not in the US. My general impression is that positive (the-government-should-provide-it) rights are much more rarely "fundamental" in the sense of being deep in a polity's consensus.