Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., faced strong criticism online after he questioned the idea of God-given rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.
“The idea that rights don’t come from laws or the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities,” Kaine said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday.
“They do it because they believe they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is very troubling.
“I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I think if we had a discussion about natural rights with people from different religions, there would be big differences in how they define those rights.”
Kaine was responding to the statement of Riley Barnes, nominated to be assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. Barnes had agreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments emphasizing that the U.S. was founded on the principle “that all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our Creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”
“Incredible that the current Senator from Virginia rejects the core principle of the Declaration Of Independence,” civil liberties attorney Laura Powell wrote while sharing a viral clip of his comments.
After the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, strongly criticized Kaine’s statement.
“I almost fell out of my chair because that ‘radical and dangerous notion’ — in his words — is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created,” Cruz said.
He also quoted Thomas Jefferson from 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.”
Cruz shared a video of Kaine’s remarks and wrote, “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.”
Rep. Riley Moore, R-W. Va., said it was ironic that Kaine disagreed with Thomas Jefferson, noting, “It’s unbelievable that the Democrat senator from the same state as Thomas Jefferson would declare that the very foundational idea of our Republic is ‘extremely troubling.’”
Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Amy Swearer added, “We literally fought & died over the principle that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that the sole just purpose of Government is to secure these God-given rights for us.”
Beanie Geoghegan, co-founder of Freedom in Education, shared a quote from Alexander Hamilton: “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
