“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.” If you recognized that passage as perhaps the most famous line from the Declaration of Independence, congratulations: You are officially smarter than MS NOW’s Katy Tur, who apparently has never bothered to read the Declaration of Independence.
During a Monday panel segment, Tur questioned whether House Speaker Mike Johnson was “putting God over the Declaration of Independence.”
“What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that ‘Our rights do not derive from government. They come from you, our Creator and heavenly Father.’ Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?” an incredulous Tur asked.
Nobody on the panel was apparently capable of pointing out that Johnson was merely paraphrasing one of the most famous passages of the Declaration. Instead, MS NOW contributor and Atlantic writer McKay Coppins (who also apparently has not read the Declaration) said he “think[s]” the “idea is not wholly uncommon” and “not totally abnormal” (as if it’s slightly abnormal).
But there is not much “thinking” that needs to be done in order to respond to Tur, as anyone with an elementary understanding of the Declaration could have simply pointed out that Johnson was loosely paraphrasing a key line from the document’s second paragraph.
Since Tur and Coppins seem confused about the concept of natural rights, here is a brief refresher: The founders believed that all men are created equal and born with certain natural rights that are pre-political and grounded in nature and reason. God does not make one man better than the other or with a right to rule another — as the British Crown believed and the colonists rejected. As Thomas Jefferson explained: “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
Therefore, the founders were creating a form of government — the only form of government they believed to be legitimate — that was designed to protect those natural, “unalienable” rights that were endowed to us by our Creator. (A more detailed analysis of natural rights can be found here.)
In fact, the founders acknowledged time and time again that rights come from God, going so far as to say in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 that “religion” is the “duty which we owe to our Creator.” In other words, the founders absolutely believed (to Tur’s apparent surprise) that God is above any civil government or political document that civil government could produce because God did endow us with certain unalienable rights.
Yet some of the biggest names on the left simply do not understand that. It isn’t just Tur who is historically illiterate. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. — the same man who was nearly a heartbeat away from the presidency — said in September that if you believe rights come from God, you are a terrorist.
“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. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia 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. So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling,” Kaine said.
But the commentary from Kaine and Tur is proof of what happens when left-wing pundits and politicians lose touch with the foundation of America. They believe that rights come from government. If rights come from government, then government can redefine them and even revoke them. Freedom ceases to exist because the individual becomes subject to the whim of the passions of the government.
The founders believed the exact opposite. They believed rights exist independently of government and therefore could not be taken away by government, which is why Tur’s embarrassing question matters so much. Tur has just proven (for the umpteenth time) that she is not someone who can be trusted to comment on politics. Anyone who has never read the Declaration of Independence or who cannot grasp its most basic premise is not fit to lecture the public about American politics. Likewise, any politician who fails to understand that rights are God-given fundamentally misunderstands his role in office.
But Tur and Kaine’s commentary exposes a deeper problem, that is, many on the modern left are not merely ignorant or misguided in their knowledge of the Declaration — they simply do not care. And they do not care because they reject the Declaration’s central premise all together.
The left increasingly wants a government in which rights are derived from the government and where rights can similarly be revoked by the government. That worldview would make the left’s crusade for laws censoring things like so-called “hate speech,” undermining the Second Amendment, restricting religious liberty, and confiscating wealth to pay for their utopian fantasies much easier to accomplish if those pesky God-given rights aren’t in the way.
