The Senator from Virginia vs. the Declaration of Independence

At a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia – Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate – decided to pick a fight not with the nominee before him so much with the American founding itself. In a remarkable four-minute speech, clips of which went viral, Kaine challenged the very idea of natural rights – that is, the belief that human beings possess fundamental freedoms simply by virtue of being human, not because government chooses to grant them.

His lecture was provoked by a seemingly uncontroversial statement. Riley Barnes, nominated as Assistant Secretary of State, quoted his presumptive future boss in his opening remarks: “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.” He warned that when rights are untethered from that principle, “they can be easily manipulated by authoritarians and bad actors.”

As most American schoolchildren would recognize, this statement is taken nearly verbatim from the Declaration of Independence, which affirms that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” For nearly 250 years, this idea has been America’s mission statement. Yet Kaine reacted with indignation, calling the notion “extremely troubling” and insisting it should make Americans “very, very nervous.”

Kaine centered his argument on likening the principles in the Declaration to Iran’s theocracy: “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.” The comparison is absurd. The Islamic Republic of Iran has never positioned itself as a champion of natural rights. Its regime is built on repression, not liberty, and its Supreme Leader has openly sneered at human rights as a Western pretense. To liken Jefferson and Madison to clerical dictators in Tehran is simply dishonest.

And dishonesty, not ignorance, seems to be the basis for Kaine’s statements. He is an Ivy League graduate and a former governor of Virginia – the home state of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. He knows perfectly well what the Declaration says and what the Founders believed. If he pretends otherwise, it is because he wants to send a message.

That message became clearer as Kaine continued to protest that attributing rights to God would somehow “demean” government and law. “I would never try to demean the law,” he said. In other words: How dare anyone suggest that politicians are beneath God? Despite describing himself as a “devout” Catholic, Kaine is comfortable diminishing the divine but not the authority of lawmakers like himself.

Although Kaine claims that appealing to natural rights is something that just arose “suddenly, after 250 years,” in fact, it is the foundation of the American tradition. The Founders insisted that government was subordinate to natural rights, not the other way around Kaine warns that divine endowments are theocratic, when in reality they are the only safeguard against despotism. Without rights anchored in something higher than law, there is nothing to stop law from becoming mere power. Kaine’s argument is not only incorrect, it is dangerous.

Bishop Robert Barron, responding to Kaine’s remarks on social media, explained: “If government creates our rights, then government can take them away.” That was exactly the tyranny the Declaration was written to resist. And one need not be religious to see the danger. Secular thinkers have long defended natural rights on philosophical grounds. The point is not that every American must invoke God, but that human dignity does not hinge on the state’s permission. Yet Kaine will not even concede that. He suggests instead that rights exist only because government decrees them – a logic fit for authoritarians, not heirs of Jefferson.

Why would Kaine want to dismantle this philosophy? Because for today’s Democratic Party, natural rights are inconvenient. They are limits on government power, barriers that cannot be legislated away. Many progressives would prefer rights to be malleable—redefined, expanded, or rescinded at will, according to the agenda of the moment. Again and again, the left reveals it values power over principle.

Kaine’s remarks were not a stray gaffe. It was a glimpse of where his party is heading. The left’s constant attempts to delegitimize the Founding Fathers themselves, combined with the bogeyman of a supposed modern Christian nationalist movement, has become a tool to alienate Americans from the ideas that made the republic possible.

Without the concept of natural rights, individuals don’t have rights at all – only benefits and favors granted and withdrawn by the politicians in power. For politicians who want to be the source of your freedoms, God is a rival, our founding principles are obstacles, and natural rights in particular threaten to undermine their authority. In the hearing, Kaine said the quiet part out loud: In his vision, your rights belong to him and his party. And they can take them back whenever they please.