Last week, a U.S.
senator from Virginia flatly rejected the central principle of the Declaration
of Independence.
“The notion that rights
don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the
creator—that’s what the Iranian government believes,” said Sen. Tim Kaine
(VA-D) who ran for vice president alongside Hillary Clinton, during a
confirmation hearing. “It’s a theocratic
regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sun nis, Bahá’is, Jews,
Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe they
understand what natural rights are from their creator.” Kaine went on to say, “The notion that our
rights do not come from our laws or our government should make people very,
very nervous.” He said, Americans should worry about someone who
believes rights come from God “because people of any religious tradition or
none are entitled to the equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment.
It shouldn’t matter what their religious
background is, what they think about God or the Creator, what their church
affiliation is.”
Kaine accused Riley M.
Barnes, President Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for the
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, of attempting to “demean” laws
and governments by saying that they are not the source of our rights.
Notice the sleight of
hand: Kaine suggests that if we ground natural rights in the Creator rather
than government, then we will deny natural rights to people who don’t believe
in God. Yet the senator, gets the
problem exactly backward.
We cannot deny rights
to people based on what they believe exactly because we believe rights come
from God, not from government. The very
notion of religious freedom comes from the belief that it is our duty as human
beings to honor God, that God wants us to do so voluntarily, and that duty
comes before the duty to government. Therefore,
government cannot compel us to adopt one religion or another—that would be
abusing its limited role established by God.
If we dig up the divine grounding of our rights and instead plant them
in the unstable soil of limited human governments, we are not just causing our
rights to wither, but actively uprooting the foundation of our country.
It is shameful that Sen.
Kaine, who might have been a heartbeat away from the presidency, appears to
have forgotten the words of the Declaration of Independence:
“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 abolish it.”
If Kaine is so intent
on stopping us from “demeaning” laws and governments, will he lead a petition
for the United States to subject itself again to Great Britain? Should the United States submit itself to the
Roman Empire, of which Britain at one time was a part?
I hasten to add, I
agree with the senator that Iran gets human rights disastrously wrong, but I
would ask Kaine how we know that Iran is wrong.
If government is the grounding of our rights, then by what basis do we
say one government’s definition of rights is superior to another?
For almost 250 years,
our great nation has grounded our rights in the firm, sturdy soil of God’s
creation, and we defend religious liberty precisely because we believe our
rights are more abiding than any human government. That is exactly what Barnes meant when he
wrote, “I believe our country and our government is the best in the world, and
our strength comes from our enduring values. These values aren’t an endless list of
‘rights’ that people create and change and form to meet their own needs or
desires. These values aren’t identity
politics. They are the historic, natural
rights that we have as individuals, pursuing life, liberty, and happiness in
this world.” “For rights to be
untethered from this core principle is to make them mere sentiments, easily
manipulated by authoritarians and bad actors,” Barnes added. “Natural rights are a blessing and an
immutable reality.”
That’s exactly the
sentiment I want to hear from a government official, sworn to follow the
Constitution and tasked with promoting human rights abroad. If anything makes me nervous, it is hearing a
U.S. senator seeking to chip away at that foundation.
Rev. Dr. Kenneth L.
Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
“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 abolish it.”
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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