Dem senator attacks America's founding principle

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) last week attacked the principle that rights are granted by God rather than the government, which is the foundational basis for the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence states that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Government’s purpose, says the founding document, is only “to secure these rights.”

Similarly, the US Constitution takes care to enshrine rights as inherent rather than permissions granted by the government. The First Amendment, for example, declares that “Congress shall make no law” restricting the right to free speech, religion, or assembly, which citizens inherently possess. The Second Amendment does not grant the right to keep and bear arms but only restricts the government from “infringing” on it.

‘That's what the Iranian government believes’

Sen. Kaine, however, finds this “extremely troubling.” During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, the senator lashed out at Riley Barnes, Trump’s nominee for U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. Barnes said in his opening statement that “we are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God, our creator, not from our laws, not from our governments.”

Kaine told Barnes that he was echoing the belief of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"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," Kaine said. "It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities.”

"And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator," he continued. "So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling."

Sen. Cruz hits back

After Kaine left the chamber, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Barnes that he almost fell out of his chair.

“Sen. Kaine said in this hearing that he found it a radical and dangerous notion that you would say our rights came from God and not from government,” Cruz said. “That ‘radical and dangerous notion,’ in his words, is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created.”

"And if you do not believe me, and you made reference to this, Mr. Barnes, then you can believe perhaps the most prominent Virginian to ever serve, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence, ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator.’" 

"Not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God," Cruz said.

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