The U.S. Senate has wasted no time getting back to serving the American people after its six-week summer recess. With issues like the Sept. 30 deadline to have either a budget or a continuing resolution or risk a partial government shutdown on the agenda, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia reminded us of the twisted view the Left has of our civil rights and how much control it wants government to have over them.
During a nominations hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the former Democrat vice presidential candidate said, “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. … So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”
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Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took his Senate colleague to task regarding the obvious and sadly ironic point that it was Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson who first wove into our national DNA in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from our Creator.
Cruz wrote on X: “The casual condemnation of America’s founding principle is exactly what is wrong with today’s Democrat Party. Government protects our God-given rights, it does not create or destroy them.”
Let’s examine where Jefferson got that idea.
Greek philosophers like Aristotle spoke of natural justice and natural rights existing apart from human laws and institutions.
The Judeo-Christian tradition was extremely influential in the development of natural rights theory in the West. Biblical passages reference universal moral laws and suggest all people have inherent worth as creations made in God’s image. Jewish philosopher Maimonides spoke of divine law granting freedom and intellectual inquiry. And Catholic theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas wrote of an eternal divine law that gives rise to natural rights that apply to all humankind.
Jefferson, a devout student of the Enlightenment, was well versed in the writings of philosopher John Locke, whose ideas on natural rights stemmed from his belief in natural law, a set of inherent principles governing human behavior, which he argued were granted by God. This is most certainly where Jefferson was influenced to this point of view.
There was also a legal reason why Jefferson wrote this philosophy into the Declaration of Independence. This was a declaration of emancipation for the American colonists based on the principle that even the king of England was subject to the rule of law, and the “abuses and usurpations” Jefferson listed were the Continental Congress’ presentation of evidence to Parliament that he had violated the law.
The argument was that the king was bound by law to protect the God-given rights of his subjects, and having failed that, the colonies no longer were legally bound to recognize his authority (or send him their taxes).
So, what about Kaine’s view that rights come from the government? Where does that come from? Ironically, most who hold that theory point also to Locke. Yes, the same John Locke.
In Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government,” which delivers the beginnings of natural rights theory, a young Jefferson first read of how the authority of government derives from a social contract between rulers and the governed, where individuals consent to the government’s power to protect their rights.
Those who share Kaine’s viewpoint that rights come from government base it on the concept that rights only exist where there is a government to protect them. Therefore, if a government chooses to defend a “right,” it is therefore “granted;” and if it chooses not to, it never existed, or the government has, in essence, taken it away.
Of course, the danger in this position is twofold. First, rights are fleeting. The government decides when and if you have them and when you don’t.
Second, the government can—when, let’s say, its reelection is in jeopardy—begin to invent “rights,” like housing or health care, that it can then guarantee to attempt to gain the support of the populace. Think the Great Society.
Here’s where Locke debunks Kaine’s position. Those “rights” that the American Left likes to invent require another citizen to perform some kind of labor to guarantee them—to build the dwelling to provide housing or to perform a medical treatment to provide health care.
Locke steadfastly said that one cannot be compelled to provide a service without his consent, as it would imply a violation of his very freedom and his rights.
Those who share Kaine’s modern philosophy of fleeting, government-granted rights go against the entire idea behind the American Revolution, against 250 years of America’s foundational principles, and against thousands of years of natural rights philosophy.
Someone tell that to the senator who hails from Mr. Jefferson’s Virginia.