When a Democrat senator from Virginia publicly says that our rights do not come from God, he is illustrating a much larger point than this one secular principle. He is revealing the Grand Canyon–sized chasm between the two major forces contending for the soul of America.
Kaine missed the broad side of the philosophical barn. He has apparently lived his entire life in politics without understanding that the bedrock principle of our republic is that the government exists for the purpose of protecting our “self-evident” rights. If the government were to be regarded as the source of those rights, then government could, at its whim, revoke them.
The importance of this principle must never be regarded as minor. It is the essence of representative government and its legitimizing fact. What defines legitimate government is not the “right of kings to rule,” but the God-given right, and responsibility, of the people to rule themselves according to His precepts. When that is no longer regarded as the core value in a society, you get what Britain was in 1776, and to what it has recently returned: oppression.
To underscore how vital a single principle can be, one must apply it to Christianity. The Bible specifically defines the core principle of our faith. That principle has nothing to do with any political opinion. In 1 Corinthians 15:14, the Apostle Paul bluntly states, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Everything depends on whether the Resurrection actually, physically happened. There is no wiggle room, nothing ambiguous upon which Christians and non-Christians can base their opposing arguments. One must either believe it or reject it.
Kaine attempted to obfuscate our core national principle by equating the Christian faith with the Islamic tyranny that rules Iran. Islam was and is very far from what the Founders believed. Islam has nothing to do with liberty, with freedom to choose, and especially with freedom of religion. It detests them all, and when in power, it violates them. The America in which Tim Kaine enjoys his personal freedoms would never have been instituted by Muslims. We would have instead become the Barbary Pirates, against whom we waged war (and still do).
Sadly, it is necessary to point these things out, because Kaine’s view is popular, but founded in sinking sand.
This view has brought about such travesties as the sexual mutilation of mentally disturbed children. It is responsible for the trafficking and abuse of more than three hundred thousand children into our country. It is seriously undermining the basic social unit of family, redefining it as basically any living arrangement. It is replacing actual justice under the law with personal feelings about diversity, inclusion, and equity. This view has confused education with indoctrination. It has replaced freedom of speech with the shouting down of diverse points of view. Kaine’s opinion, unmoored from eternal verities but shared by millions, has become so corrupted that millions of indoctrinated Americans cheer the attempted and actual murders of prominent conservative speakers. It has replaced civil discourse with epithets such as “Nazi.”
For those of us who value our Founders’ principles, Senator Kaine’s blindness is deeply frustrating, because we know that his views are based not in history, but in a toxic ideology, the false religion which would replace God with bureaucrats. Kaine’s views, as well as those of his fellow leftists, are unresponsive to facts and reason. They are not thought through, except perhaps in the tactical sense of “gotcha” argumentation, which ever further entrenches them in self-deception.
We can be sure of this because of the arguments we never hear him (and his fellow leftists) make — arguments that would decry the enslavement of tens of thousands of small children smuggled into our nation because of open borders. I have not heard them call out for the prevention of child-mutilating surgeries. I must have missed their speeches decrying the Hamas-supporting antisemites on college campuses. Their views seem carefully crafted to placate their far-left supporters, a common practice among Democrat politicians. Leftists are well aware that straying from leftist ideology, even by so much as a single word, can end their careers, so they toe the line.
In that regard, to be fair, Tim Kaine alone is not the problem. He simply spilled the beans, saying publicly what was intended by his fellow Democrats to remain hidden.
Frighteningly, Kaine’s anti-God message portends a massive division in America, one that cannot easily be solved with the customary procedures of civil debate. Just as the Lincoln-Douglas debate was lost, presaging the Civil War, the present debate over what makes America what it is is a predictor of greater strife yet to come.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
—Ephesians 6:12
We live in interesting times indeed.
Image: Tim Kaine. Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.