Virginia senator Tim Kaine’s September 3 assertion that the idea that rights come from God is “extremely troubling” generated pushback among conservatives, and rightly so.  One would expect a senator from Virginia to understand that the idea of “inalienable rights” deriving from “the Creator” is the foundational principle of the Declaration of Independence authored by Virginian Thomas Jefferson.  Nor should it be controversial to expect him to recognize that, in one sense, the Declaration of Independence is America’s first constitution.  It makes clear that rights are not simply the products of 50+1 of “We, the People,” but that certain things are “inalienable” no matter what majorities might be mustered to the contrary.

So why did Tim Kaine say what he did?  I’m loath to dismiss it as ignorance.  Any senator — especially a Virginia senator — should know better.  And Tim Kaine is a lawyer.  The ideas of the Declaration of Independence regarding the origin of rights should not be unfamiliar.

Let me suggest a different explanation for Senator Kaine’s remarks: He really believes that, because he couldn’t support or vote for many of the things Democrats endorse unless he does.  Parental rights are ground zero on that agenda today.

The rights of parents to determine, direct, and regulate their child’s upbringing is something in which they have primacy.  They have primacy because parental rights are pre-political: families existed before the state.  The parent-child bond precedes the state and does not depend on it.

In other words, parental rights are inalienable.  They are natural rights, deriving from the nature of the parent-child relationship.  They are not the product of the state’s generous concession.

The problem is, Democrats really don’t believe that.

They don’t believe that when they interfere with parental rights to choose what kind of education a child receives.  Instead of recognizing that education exists for children, not schools — a critical distinction — they insist that educational monies must be limited to the public school monopoly, the educational plantation on which they want to keep all children.  Blue states are, in general, the most hostile to educational choice.

Harvard professor Elizabeth Bartholet attacked homeschooling because she thinks it exaggerates parental rights.  Her contention is that homeschooling parents have an obligation to expose their children to “alternate viewpoints,” something she thinks the public school plantation does.  In other words, parents have no right to form their children against the prevailing views of elites, especially if the parents inculcate traditional Jewish and Christian values.  Let’s be honest: If homeschooling were a phenomenon of secular atheist parents, do you think Professor Bartholet would be insisting on those kids receiving extended exposure to a traditional religious environment?

Denying parental rights takes soft rhetorical form, like “it takes a village to raise a child” or “schools and parents are ‘partners’ in a child’s education.”  No, friends, schools are not my parental “partner.”  I named my child, but there are plenty of school districts that have arrogated to themselves the belief that they can give my child a different name in school and keep me as parent ignorant of it.  There’s even a case headed for the Supreme Court — Foote v. Ludlow (MA) School Committee — attempting to defend schools’ “rights” to hide such information from parents.  Education supports parental rights; it should not undermine them.

Subversion of parental rights by legislative fiat occurs in other areas, too.  Parents are progressively frozen out of a child’s medical history as he enters the teen years, times at which parental involvement in directing a child’s transition to adulthood are essential.  In the name of the great Democrat sacrament of abortion, the Supreme Court for 50 years carved out a “judicial bypass” whereby a judge could overrule the need for parental consent or even knowledge before a minor female could obtain an abortion.   In Kaine’s own state, which still has laws requiring parental consent to a minor’s abortion, the Fairfax County Public Schools have been accused of facilitating abortions without parental knowledge or consent.  As far as I know, Tim Kaine to date has said nothing about that scandal.  There are already blue states declaring themselves “sanctuaries” for gender mutilation of minors.  Five northern Virginia school districts are fighting the Education Department to keep “trans girls” (i.e., boys) in girls’ private spaces. 

None of these things are possible if one accepts the idea that there are “inalienable rights,” including the inalienable pre-political rights of parents to govern their child’s upbringing.  And all of these things are political policies on which Tim Kaine and his party have staked out a hill they want to die on. 

So when Virginia’s junior senator claims that rights don’t “come from God,” it’s not ignorance.  It’s the necessary prerequisite to subverting parental rights. 

Image: Tim Kaine.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.