Below is my column in The Hill on the controversial remarks of Sen. Tim Kaine (D. Va.) denouncing a nominee who believed in natural law and the concept of God-given rights. By the end of the hearing, Kaine effectively lumped Alexander Hamilton with Ayatollah Khomeini in his statement at the committee hearing.
Here is the column:
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) this week warned the American people that a Trump nominee for a State Department position was an extremist, cut from the same cloth as the Iranian mullahs and religious extremists.
Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, revealed his dangerous proclivities to Kaine in his opening statement when he said that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”
It was a line that should be familiar to any citizen — virtually ripped from the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary.
Yet Kaine offered a very surprising response in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
“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,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. 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.”
In my forthcoming book celebrating the 250th anniversary, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I detail how the Declaration of Independence (and our nation as a whole) was founded on a deep belief in natural laws coming from our Creator, not government.
That view is captured in the Declaration, which states, “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.”
Kaine represents Virginia, the state that played such a critical role in those very principles that he now associates with religious fanatics and terrorists.
In fact, Kaine’s view did exist at the founding — and it was rejected. Alexander Hamilton wrote that “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.”
Although the Framers were clear, Kaine seemed hopelessly confused. He later insisted that “I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”
This country was founded on core, shared principles of natural law, including a deep commitment to individual rights against the government. The government was not the source but the scourge of individual rights.
This belief in preexisting rights was based on such Enlightenment philosophers as John Locke who believed that, even at the beginning when no society existed, there was law, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one,” he wrote. “And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind.”
Note that a natural law can also be based on a view of the inherent rights of human beings — a view of those rights needed to be fully human. Like divinely ordained rights, these are rights (such as free speech) that belong to all humans, regardless of the whim or want of a given government. They are still not “rights [that] come from our laws or our governments.”
The danger of legal positivism is that what government giveth, government can take away. Our prized unalienable rights become entirely alienable if they are merely the product of legislatures and courts.
It also means that constitutional protections or even the constitutional system itself is discardable, like out-of-fashion tricorn hats. As discussed in the book, a new generation of Jacobins is rising on the American left, challenging our constitutional traditions. Commentator Jennifer Szalai has denounced what she called “Constitution worship” and argued that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
That chorus includes establishment figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley Law School and author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
Other law professors, such as Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale, have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
That “reclamation” is easier if our rights are based not in natural law, but rather in the evolving priorities of lawmakers like Kaine. Protections then become not the manifestations of human rights, but of rights invented by humans.
Kaine’s view — that advocates of natural law are no different from mullahs applying Sharia law — is not just ill-informed but would have been considered by the founders as constitutionally blasphemous.
He is, regrettably, the embodiment of a new crisis of faith in the foundations of our republic on the very eve of its 250th anniversary. This is a crisis of faith not just in our Constitution, but in each other as human beings “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a best-selling author whose forthcoming“Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” explores the foundations and the future of American democracy.
I watched Kaine’s performance in that hearing, and the arrogant posturing of his body matched the hubris of his words.
RICH-Democrat-fascists only understand monopoly. While “natural law,” which is a body of rules inherent in human nature, and essential to or binding upon human society, the deeper question becomes what is INHERENT in human nature? The simple answer is both good and evil ….
Because of natural law’s open meaning, we are stuck with an existential battle in which those devils who use the word democrat to describe their ideological interpretation of “natural law” are the evil side, we must contend (AND prevail!) against their demented interpretation. No wonder Kaine shimmied in his senate chair with diabolical delight in pontificating about “natural law”—he does know much about it, and we are warned.
Over the decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten this issue correct (under both Conservatives and Liberals justices).
The high court ruled that any student (citizen) can practice their faith in public schools. But public school teachers (government officials) can’t impose their religious interpretations onto students (citizens).
The court also ruled that government courthouses could display multiple religious faiths (including all religious interpretations), but couldn’t display only Christian symbols of religion (favoring one religious interpretation over others).
The United States of America was primarily founded upon Christian principles and practices, regardless of the hypocrisy and cynicism of certain “founding fathers,” of which too much is made ado. Go study the founding PREACHERS whose contribution toward creating a more perfect union was monumental, and of which (history) too little is made ado!
This undermining rule you spout, that “The court … ruled government courthouses could display multiple religious faiths (including all religious interpretations), but couldn’t display only Christian symbols of religion (favoring one religious interpretation over others)” is like saying a culture that has a traditional costume can’t use it because late-comers have other costumes. The first, and most important, consideration, in this context, is the primacy of the founding principle or costume. It’s called tradition, and we need it to prevail in these times!
You hit the nail on the head. For that same reason, the schools and cannot foist their political views on a child or promote a lifestyle such as the current fad of transgender ideology, Marxism, etc.
These are belief systems and often not grounded in fact. Therefore, such examples are an ideology.
Private schools can do anything that parents wish them to.
Public schools can not exist.
If you can get the parents to agree. If not, some private school board and administrator decide what to do.
You are talking about the devout Christian that performed Christian missionary work in third-world nations? Closer to devout Christian Jimmy Carter than a serial violator of the Ten Commandments. That Tim Kaine?
Did any of his critics perform Christian missionary work in dangerous third-world nations?
Could you not find a private place to jack off this morning?
Many charlatans use the cover of sacrifice and piety, to pad their resumes, especially those in Kaine’s rich-fascist age bracket….
How do you know “THAT” Kaine” wasn’t preaching a “social [woke] gospel,” which is pure heresy. Those who disseminate false teachings, surreptitiously among the innocent and inexperienced, are called wolves in sheep clothing. If Kaine were ever truly a Christian, he would never abandon the Christian version of natural law in favor of bashing it and comparing it to the oppression of Islam.
Think harder.
Unalienable Rights endowed by our Creator, whatever rights government might allow. First Amendment, Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board. Supremacy Clause, sanctuary cities. Electoral College, simple majority. Fourth Amendment, Steele dossier. Independent Supreme Court, Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and Schumer’s threats. Tenth Amendment, tax dollars for trans community overseas. No person is above the law, Hillary Clinton’s emails. … Tim Kaine is not news.
Our form of government comes from the free will of the People to self-organize. It’s stated right there in the Preamble. Therefore, I clarify the claim “our rights come from the government” to “our rights are vested in our willpower as a people to remain united and be able to self-organize (cooperate)”.
I’m suspicious of “our rights come from God” because we know how power-hungry, manipulative elites in the past “spoke for God” as a means of authoritarianism. Recall the psychology of the Salem witchhunts — mob paranoia and unjust killings, where the authority employed was claimed as “good vs. evil”. English common law was brushed aside as not relevant to the devil and witches. Do you not think, given the opportunity, such self-righteous paroxisms of state violence could not be reignited by a call to subordinate law to zealous, self-righteous emotions?
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t accusing the King and Parliament of being evil and the American colonists being good. It laid out a specific bill of particulars which were actionables on the part of British decisionmakers. That framing of conflict (and conflict resolution) clearly defines governance as “of man”, not of divine origin. The Patriots were throwing off the last vestiges of “divine right” in declaring independence from the Crown and possessing the right to form a new government, and with it, an expanded document of legal rights.
The idea that God provides human rights is absurd in the face of realities such as organ harvesting in China, and sex trafficking worldwide. If God were the power source of rights, explain why He cannot stop these atrocities. Only a civilized, well-organized People acting freely to delegate certain authority to law enforcement can deliver on the promise of legal rights. Weaken that societal cohesion and resoluteness, and you get criminal anarchy.
The only role God plays in this equation is guiding the individuals in society to work together, act in trustworthy fashion, set high expectations, and choose wise leadership. Otherwise, the rights we enjoy are vested in our power to agree on laws and give government the exclusive power to enforce them. Without the ability to come together and govern ourselves, we are noting but heathens in a jungle — social primates governed by primitive instincts.
Beware the elitist who claims our rights flow from God — s/he will be the first to pipe up and attempt to speak for God and what God wants. We’ve seen that movie before. It took thousands of years (the Enlightenment) to finally free ourselves from its entirely predictable abuses of authority. We’re not going back.
you are confusing the creation of rights with the identifying and protecting of rights.
Perhaps, but what value are rights that go unprotected? Whether rights exist or not is not theoretical question — when rights are violated, they DON’T exist for the persons violated. It’s all in the enforcement certainty that any one can claim to enjoy rights.
Beware the elitist who claims our rights flow from God….
we should beware John Locke ?
First Treatise of Government, “Of Government: Book I”
§ 169.
What a “lineal succession to paternal government” was then established, we have already seen. I only now consider how long this lasted, and that was to their captivity, about 500 years: from thence to their destruction by the Romans, above 650 years after, the “ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government” was again lost, and they continued a people in the promised land without it. So that of 1750 years that they were God’s peculiar people, they had hereditary kingly government amongst them not one third of the time; and of that time there is not the least footstep of one moment of “paternal government, nor the re-establishment of the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to it,” whether we suppose it to be derived, as from its fountain, from David, Saul, Abraham, or, which upon our author’s principles is the only true, from Adam.
https://www.nlnrac.org/earlymodern/locke/documents/first-treatise-of-government.html
NB: John Locke includes the name of Adam of the Genesis Creation story 389 times, the name of God, 266 times
The idea that God provides human rights is absurd in the face of realities such as organ harvesting in China, and sex trafficking worldwide.
The idea that humans are a source of good is absurd in the face of reality such as organ harvesting in China, and sex trafficking worldwide, not to mention trolling internet forums.
See how idiotic comments work?
Your paid handlers aren’t sending us their best
^^^ too stupid to realize that he has mad man his god, so the shoe still fits.
*made
pbinca;
While I do beleive that we are endowed with our rights by our creator, I do not think that is a critical aspect to the argument.
Nearly all religions REQUIRE free will. There is good reason for this, but it is tangent to this argument.
The FACT is that Humans have free will – whether there is or is not a god.
The FACT of that free will requires logically that natural rights come BEFORE government. That govenrment is created to protect something that already exists.
There are “rights” created by government – the right to vote, the right to to a trial, … these ALL exist to protect natural rights.
Who gives a damn about “due process” about voting, about a trial if the government always gets it right ?
Civil Rights, Due Process rights, Government rights are all entirely about protecting natural rights.
Without government processes (such as Constitution writing, lawmaking and court cases), how do you propose that agreement is ever reached on what constitutes natural rights?
It’s in the formation of agreement that rights actually materialize.
For instance, do men and women enjoy equal “natural rights”? Do men and women agree on this question?
What rights, then, do women naturally have? Without formal agreement, it’s just a matter of divergent opinions. That’s not a sound basis for a society with both order and freedom.
I don’t think that George is an antisemite, but he could be
an antiyosemitesam.
I ain’t worried ’bout a black man!
People don’t care about the things that I care about, so why should I care about the things that they care about?
From George Washington and Alexander Hamilton to Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the men who forged the nation also committed some unspeakable acts.
Even though America’s founding fathers have been mythologized into godlike figures, it’s important to remember that they were human and were, of course, subject to flaws. These men have been carved in stone, but they were anything like the perfect sculptures their resolute faces on Mount Rushmore suggest they were. They were disloyal, narcissistic, and abusive.
In order to really know who the founding fathers were, we must examine them in full, including their pitfalls — which range from petty to downright evil.
George Washington wore the teeth of his slaves, John Adams made it illegal to criticize the president, and John Hancock supported the revolution because it benefitted his smuggling operation. These are the dark truths about America’s revered Founding Fathers.
John Adams Abused His Presidential Power
While president, John Adams made it illegal to criticize him.
John Adams was the second president of the United States, he wrote the oldest constitution still in use today, he was a founding father, and the first president to live in the White House.
But the founding father was also borderline dictatorial.
Adams didn’t take criticism well and despised those who voiced it, so when Congressman Matthew Lyon wrote that Adams was “swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice,” he found himself in trouble with the president.
In 1798, Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to “write, print, utter, or publish… any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings” about the president or other officials of the executive branch.
Adams claimed he’d rendered free speech punishable by law as a matter of national security, considering the new nation was nearing a war with France. After Rep. Lyon made those critiques, he was accused of being “a malicious and seditious person, and of a depraved mind and a wicked and diabolical disposition.”
Lyons was consequently fined $1,000, convicted of wreaking undo incitement, and sentenced to four months in prison. To Adams’ chagrin, Lyon campaigned for reelection behind bars and won as “a martyr to the cause of liberty and the rights of man.” There was a parade upon his February 1799 release.
But worse off than Congressman Lyon was newspaper editor Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. Bache wrote that the president was “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled,” and “toothless.” Bache was assaulted and his home was vandalized. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife received numerous death threats.
Meanwhile, the “Alien” part of the law made it as easy as possible for the president to deport immigrants and made it much harder for naturalized citizens to vote.
More than a dozen people were convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. The people protested and Thomas Jefferson used the vehement opposition to his advantage during the 1800 presidential election — and won. The Alien and Sedition Acts expired during Adams’ term and Jefferson pardoned all who were convicted under the law and most fines were refunded.
As petty as he was authoritarian, Adams became the first president to not attend the inauguration of his successor.
George Washington is revered for his prowess in war, his inability to lie, and his generosity in freeing his slaves. But the founding father actually lost more battles than he won and even though he promised to free his slaves upon his deathbed, he failed to do so.
When George Washington died in 1799, the whole nation ground to a halt. America’s first president was dead. All of America mourned and wore black armbands to honor him.
That is, everybody but the 123 slaves he failed to liberate before he passed. Washington had promised to free every single one of his slaves upon his death, it was even written in his will. But only a single slave, Revolutionary War hero William Lee, was freed immediately. Almost half of his Mount Vernon slaves remained in shackles for decades more.
Apparently, the founding father only had the legal right to free half the slaves at Mount Vernon, the rest belonged to his wife’s family. Mrs. Washington only freed the rest of their slaves when she felt that they were plotting against her. Washington’s views on the peculiar institution changed throughout his life, but he ultimately rationalized keeping his own slaves.
Washington was no different than most of his wealthy Virginian landowners in this respect, however. He, like them, owned slaves who worked his land.
Washington also reportedly used his slaves to experiment with various farming techniques.
Apologists say that Washington treated his slaves well, but he still beat them and did not free anyone while he was alive.
Good history……..Jefferson and Adams…. reconciled…..
Who cares?
“In 1798, Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to “write, print, utter, or publish… any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings” about the president or other officials of the executive branch.”
Don’t we wish we had that in law today…”False, Scandalous, AND Malicious writing or writings…”. I see nothing about TRUE statements being banned.
Look at how the Media and other Democrats operate today and you can see a real need for a reversion to that 1798 way of thinking. Lying is intentional and should be punished no matter at what level or who is doing it. Talk about cleaning up politics….imagine that if every time a politician lied they found themselves in stocks on the Court House Square! It would be a sight to see the Media right alongside them to be used as targets for old tomatoes, rotten apples and such.
While much of what you wrote is true, most of Washington’s slaves were NOT his – they were his wifes, and by the law of the time the property that his wife brought with her into the marriage returned to her on his death.
There are all kinds of other legal complications specific to the inheritance law of the time, but fundamentally Washington only had the legal power to free 2/3 of the slaves that he purchased or were inherited DIRECTLY by him – that was a small portion of all the slaves that Washington possessed. While only one slave was freed immediately most of those that could be freed were freed within a short time of Georges death. Arguably they were freed because Martha was afraid they might kill her. Still they were freed. The slaves that were not freed were never truly Georges.
This was not a problem unique to Washington – though the assets that he either received through marying Martha or through Martha’s inheritance were more complex than the norms of the time.
Will you take the time to comment on the horrific and despicable ruling by the Supreme Court today–or is that not part of the game plan for you?
You’re talking about the murder of six Jews in Jerusalem by Muslim terrorists? The terrorists are now in the hands if the devil and will pay for their crimes *forever*
So everyone must guess what you mean ?
He has a few Latino bottom boys that do his nasty bidding since he can’t get an American gay men to even look at him.
Democrats only express an interest in illegal immigrants so that they can use them like they did to blacks, to fulfill their selfish pleasures
Nope. The court did the right thing, and NO it’s not racist.
I have to write this somewhere and here is where I say it.
My God people who have not woken the eff up to the FACT that the Democrat party is nothing more than a criminal syndicate with liars who lie all day long to the voters they emotionally manipulate to serve as their useful idiots who keep voting them back into power. It is just beyond belief that Democrat voters have not realized the utter disregard and disrespect Democrat politicians have for them. Wake up. My god you are as stupid as the Democrat politictians who get your vote know you are. That’s why you are their useful idiots who they lie to, brainwash and disrespect by letting you live in poverty, crime, violence and filth. Wake up already.
Hillary as president? My god, no. Tim Kaine as VP? What a sick joke. The guy is a nutcase. His son is Antifa scum.
Nobody with a brain voted for Adam Schiff to be a senator. Nobody. McGarvey was the voters choice.
Nobody with a brain believes that Gov. Newscum survived three recall elections. Because he didn’t.
Nobody with a brain believes LA Mayor Karen the commie is there because voters elected her. She was installed. And she is being protected. Just like Newscum has been protected. And Adam Schiff the liar and criminal sociopath is being protected.
You have to ask. Why? How? By whom? Its a crime racket of cheating and corruption. Democrats are pure sociopathic criminal scum.
Because none of these Dem politicians are doing anything “good” for the people. Just the opposite!
They are pathological liars. They are sociopaths. They are criminals themselves.
But voters keep them in power? You really believe that bullshlit?
Wake up dummy Dems.
You are the useful idiots they count on to keep them in power.
You are stupid. and they know it. They count on your votes. Because they know how stupid you are.
Thats called disrespect.
You watch MSNBC so they can keep you stupid.
It is reasonable to assume that when Kaine was a student at Harvard Law he had to take a class in constitutional law during his first year. One wonders how he got through with a passing grade.
“House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) rebuked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) after she told a predominantly African American church audience not to “run to the liquor store” with state inflation rebate checks, marking the second time the governor has faced backlash for comments directed at the Black community.”
– Breitbart
Even atheistic Stephen Hawking (who did not believe in an interventionist God) nonetheless allowed for the concept of a God that could be interpreted as metaphysically representing the collective laws of nature and the cosmos.
Back in the 1700s and centuries prior to the Big Bang Theory, a finite and mortal man struggled with mating any confusing new scientific revelations and/or principles with an intact understanding of the existence of a “God.”
But since the Framers wisely disavowed any intertwining of religion and government, the First Amendment left us free to interpret and invoke the laws of nature and the cosmos as instructive and inspirational in the later development of government and law.
Therefore, interpreting a “God” as the collective essence of natural law and the cosmos, from which the laws of man and government later derive and follow,- I find no meaningful conflict. The fact that mortal and primitive Man, in some religions, perceives “God” as “God our Father,” who “created Man in His image,”– or otherwise defines Man’s individual or religious/formalized understanding of “God” as different from other men,– does not alter the basic premise of a “natural law” that comes from a Creator “God” who is responsible for creating them. And I am not offended by the use of the word “God,” -understanding that it may mean different things to different people. It even allows for this:
“Millions of stars placed in the skies by one God
Millions of men lift up their eyes to one God
So many children calling to Him by many a different name
One Father loving each the same
“Many the ways all of us pray to one God
Many the paths winding their way to one God
Walk with me, brother, there were no strangers after His work was done
For your God, and my God are one.”
—Johnny Mathis
(Apologies for lengthwise, I’m giving John Say a run for his money.)
(p.s., a clear and cool night out tonight; staring up into the stars and heavens, I appreciate how finite and insignificant we are as individuals, and how powerful we can be when united under common, basic understandings of the significance of each other.
Night night, all.
I don’t think Kaine’s show of stupidity indicates a ” new crisis of faith in the foundations of our republic” or the Constitution: I think it is just more evidence of the failure of American education to teach the basics of our founding.
If Kaine was 30 that would be true. He is old enough he was taught properly.
Pirate, the children have been taught to hate the US, the founders are white, the Constitution and Christianity. They’ve been taught in memes without education.
Marxist are confused. No groups get rights. ONLY individuals.
Which leaves them no room for power over others.
They hate individual rights and equality under the law. restrains the mob.
What about groups of individuals?
Kaine LATER correctly points out that agreement on what are our natural rights is not easily reached.
I do not much care whether our rights come from god, nature or are just inherent in being human.
What is Absolutely true is that the concention that rights are grants from government is nonsense.
The social contract is the choice of people to contract with government to protect our rights. We surrender the natural right to initiate violence in return for govenrment protection of rights.
Who would agree to a social contract where those in power get to decide what our rights are and whether they will protect them ? That is just a form of slavery.
I do not think it is of critical important – atleast not in terms of rights whether our rights flow from a creator or nature or the nature of humanity – the results are inherently the same.
The more accurately the law Reflects and protects those natural rights the better off in nearly every way the people are.
Put differently I think you can arrive at the same fundimental definition of human rights from a purely utilitarian perspective – without reference to a creator.
If you beleive in god – that should not surprise – god would have created an ordered existance.
If you do not – that ordered existance is still required or nothing would work.
Regardless what you are calling legal positivism is a logical failure. It inherently will result in a system under stresses that will tear it apart.
Humans have an overwhelming desire for freedom, and freedomn does not exist without rights that can not be constrained by a majority or created by our legislators.
I’m sure someone else has already said this, but Kamala was not the only bullet we dodged in 2024.
Jim M
“Who would agree to a social contract where those in power get to decide what our rights are and whether they will protect them ? That is just a form of slavery.”
Republicans. That’s why they strongly believe in a constitutional Republic. We vote to put some in power to decide what our rights are and whether they will protect them. That’s not slavery. We consent to be governed when we vote.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans consent to be governed in any old way the politicians ultimately decide. We consent to be governed only within the framework of the Constitution, which puts limits on what constitutes a legitimate law or action by the government. That limitation on power is inherent in any vote.
If you make absurdly illogical claims – how can you ever expect anyone to pay the slightest attention to what you say ?
You are correct that the view of democrats and republicans is quite different – though that was not always the case. In the past it has been democrats that championed individual rights.
Regardless, by YOUR own argument – the constitution was enacted – not by the majority – but by a SUPER MAJORITY. Trump was elected president through that constitutional process. The members of the house and senate were elected in the same way.
By YOUR argument THEY get to decide that our rights are an whether they will be protected.
And that is PRECISELY what is wrong with your idiocy.
Neither Trump and the republican majority in congress, nor Obama aor Biden and a democratic majority in congress get to decide what our natural rights are.
You can accept those come from god, or just the struture of nature, or that they come from the fact that humans have free will. Regardless, either you actually accept that natural rights are supra government even supra constitutional – that they exist absent govenrment and that the purpose of government – the social contract is to secure those natural rights, or you are stuck with whatever rights Trump and the majority in congress decide you have.
The problem with this legal positivism nonsense is it is pretty much guaranteed – whether you are on the right or left that at sometime – the majority of people will be happy to take away YOUR rights.
Your legal positivist nonsense – makes slavery perfectly legal and moral everywhere it was practiced until the moment in time that the majority of people changed their minds and decided it was not moral and should not be legal.
Further you can not condemn those in the past – because you have no foundation for rights or morality.
If the majority gets to decide – then that is how it is. Worse still – 2who is to say that tomorow the majority will not return to deciding that slavery is a good thing ?
Legal positivism, Majority rule is absolute nonsense that inevitably leads to and condones tyrany.
In the 1938 Plebescitte – Hitler received 80% of the german vote – by YOUR argument Hitler was legal and moral and he and those elected with him could legitimately decide what peoples rights were – they rights of Aryans and Jews and …
Yes, Republicans – and pretty much anyone with the slightest conception of morality REJECTS the idiotic notion that rights are determined by govenrment – especially if that govenrment reflects the views of the majority.
You can Read John Stuart Mills “On Liberty” to understand that majority rule is INHERENTLY the most tyranical form of govenrment their is. Democracy will ALWAYS lead to Socrates drinking the Hemlock. It ALWAYS ends badly – we have known that since the time of the greeks.
We have spent the 2000 years since then trying to concoct some form of representative govenrment that worked and was NOT aflicting with the fatal flaw of the tyranny of the majority.
We have not done so perfectly – but we have in the US actually managed to do better than ever before or any since.
You need not agree with our founders that natural rights come from god. But you are STUCK with the fact that they pre-exist govenrment, and that it is govenrments job to protect them.
There ARE rights “created by govenrment – these are CIVIL rights.
They do NOT enjoy the same proptections as natural rights. They are rights like the right to a jury of your peers.
Civil rights are fundimentally PROCEDURAL. They are the governments guarantee of procedures that are inherently anti-majoritarian to protect your natural rights.
1
“We consent to be governed when we vote.”
God, left wing nuts are MORONS.
No we do NOT consent to be governed when we vote.
When was the last time you voted where you had the choice to opt out of being governed.
Voting allows you to chose WHO governs you – not whether you are governed.
And as the declaration of Independence states – when Govenrment becomes abusive of our rights we the people may alter or abolish it.
To be clear the Declaration is not some legal theory. It is just a restatement of the FACTS of reality – that is why it is so effective. While universal sufferage is only commonplace in modern times – it has existed in the past, we have changed governments and even forms of government by voting. But througout history – sometimes that did not work and violence was necescary.
The Declaration of independence asserts what was always True – that when govenrment becomes abusive of the rights of the people – the people have the right to alter or abolish that govenrment – through violence if necescary.
That is thoroughly at odds with YOUR nonsense.
John Say,
“No we do NOT consent to be governed when we vote.
When was the last time you voted where you could opt out of being governed?
Voting allows you to chose WHO governs you – not whether you are governed.”
You just confirmed it. Voting allows you to chose WHO governs you and that is a consent to be governed. It’s the same thing. Republicans are pretty adamant that that is what happens when you vote. Your vote is a consent to be governed by those you choose. You can choose not to vote, but that doesn’t mean you are going ot be free from being governed. That is why it’s important to vote. If you don’t want to be governed by Republicans you vote Democrat or Independent. If you don’t want to be governed by Democrats you vote Republican or Independent.
The consent is essentially your vote. Congress was created by the consent of the people and the congress has the power to create laws that govern people. Who creates the rules in Congress and Legislatures? Those in the majority. Voters consent to be governed when they vote for their representatives and sentators. That’s it. After voting is over voters don’t have much power to do anything if they don’t like what their representatives are doing until the next election.
FYI the Declaration of Independence ceased to be a binding document once the Constitution was ratified. The only document that has the force of law is the Constitution. Not the Declaration of Indepenence. That’s why conservatives with flawed arguments fall back to the Declaration of Indepenence instead of the Constitution. Furthermore, the Declaration of Independence was a messege to the British Crown. Not to our own government. In the context of our modern world to change or remove our form of government would most certainly require violence, a literal revolution or civil war. The most civil and bloodless form of change we can manage is through voting and the system we created to affect that change, BUT that is becoming more and more difficult when those we consented to govern us, (our vote) is being manipulated and rigged by those we put in power to stay in power and retain the ability with tactics like gerrymandering and dictating who can vote and which votes count. That is why Republicans are constantly changing the rules when their chances of staying in power are threatened. One of the ways this can be prevented is by getting rid of the electoral college and Gerrymandering.
“allows you to chose WHO governs you and that is a consent to be governed. “
How does one have a discussion with a numbskull who will say stupid shlt like this?
Dumbest statement ever.
If you are convicted and then somehow are given a choice of what prison you’ll do your time, you didnt consent to the incarceration.
George, you are truly a moron.
Hey George, why dont you explain how democrats hold a 3-1 majority in the California state senate with only 60% of the vote?
I can give you a dozen more examples of democrat gerrymandering if you like.
Democrats were the first to remove the filibuster for judicial appointees and are the ONLY party to take a vote in the senate to remove the filibuster altogether. But its R’s who change the rules???
You are still the all time champion of stupid comments.
Did you forget. The dem party created the KKK and Prez Wilson supported that, plus the dem party created laws to keep the black families down.
Hitler helped to invent the Volkswagen.
Is everyone who drives one a Nazi?
Astronauts used Nazi technology to drink Tang on the moon.
There are those who do not believe in individual rights. I wish Professor Turley would explain why the Roman Catholic Church is guaranteed freedom of religion in the Constitution of the United States of America! I believe that is what I hear from them. I thought the Constitution of the United States of America guaranteed freedom of speech and religion to the individual and did not refer to established institutions of religion.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”
Each individual is free to freely excercise whatever religion they choose.
The catholic church has no first amendment protection – but each catholic does.
Further humans do NOT lose their rights when they come together in a group.
That is why Corporations MUST have the same rights as individuals because corporations (and churches) are just individuals excercising their rights together.
“Further humans do NOT lose their rights when they come together in a group.”
According to Turley that’s not true. Students protesting as a group are punished for exercising their free speech rights.
“The catholic church has no first amendment protection“
First you say the church doesn’t have 1st amendment protection. They do.
Then you say they do?
“That is why Corporations MUST have the same rights as individuals because corporations (and churches) are just individuals excercising their rights together.”
Corporations and churches are not individuals.
You are terribly confused.
The confused one is George Svelaz.
No students protesting as a group are punished for exercising their free speech rights.
Walter, you seem to see George Svelaz in all the comments with which you disagree.
This suggests a high level of paranoia, yet another psychiatric disorder.
Is he the boogeyman under your bed as well?
Does your lovely wife know about the boogeyman under your bed?
Thank you for taking notice of my comments. I note you are unable to add anything of value. Of course, that is expected since you don’t even notice that those comments are all directed to X, better known as George Svelaz, just like you are known as an antisemite.
S. Meyer you think everyone is a known antisemite whenever you can’t refute or rebut someone else’s point. You use “antisemite” on anyone you disagree with.
Antisemitism shows itself through scapegoating, Holocaust denial, stereotypes, and especially through double standards, where Jews and Israel are judged by rules applied to no one else.
S. Meyer, but of course, you always take the position that whenever someone disagrees with what you say, the only possible reason for that disagreement is that they are antisemitic.
You then reply with some stupid, irrelevant, accusatory diatribe like the above.
The only scapegoating going on is YOURS.
You are constantly playing the “Jewish victim” when people criticize your views, and it gets increasingly tiresome.
The fact is, rational people disagree with you, NOT because they are antisemitic, but because you are a mindless MAGA cult member who has drunk the Kool-Aid and is totally incapable of independent thought.
Additionally, when S. Meyer is not playing the Jewish victim, he constantly resorts to personal and childish, snotty, condescending, know-it-all insults.
This is the mark of a person with a huge chip on his shoulder, and a complete inability to conduct himself as a normal, rational, civilized human being.
“only possible reason for that disagreement is that they are antisemitic.”
You never argue facts. You throw around labels: “MAGA cult,” “Jewish victim,” whatever. You can’t make a specific point. Generalities are your only refuge, and that’s because you don’t have the intelligence to argue substance.
If you think I’m wrong, show it. Quote me, dissect it, prove it false. But you don’t, because you can’t. Instead, you hide behind anonymity and empty rhetoric, which only proves my point. The only scapegoating going on here is yours. You blame me for your inability to reason.
Blah, blah, blah.
“I’m Jewish so I am always right.”
“You are antisemitic so you are always wrong.”
Get over yourself moron.
You are wasting your life playing the constant victim.
No normal, rational human being cares what you think.
You are proving the point that your group has no intellectual ability.
What exactly do you mean by “your group” ?
You must be willfully blind or just plain stupid. Students protesting Israel’s occupation of Gaza were punished and threatened with expulsion and suspension for protesting. They were being punished for exercising their free speech rights under the pretext of breaking “civility rules” and “campus rules”. Those two don’t supercede their Constitutional rights.
They are not being punished for protesting unless protesting where it is, is illegal. They are arrested for illegal actions occurring during a protest. George Svelaz, you are terminally stupid.
They were punished for protesting. School campus open spaces are free speech forums. They were being attacked for expressing their views and using antisemitism as a pretext to silence them. Only a small number of students were arrested for vandalism and destruction of property. The rest were protesting peacfully. Republicans didn’t like that Students were protesting against Israel so they sought to punish them by seeking to expel and suspend those participated in the protests. A clear violation of their 1st amendment rights.
Can you tell us what you mean by “punishment?” It seems you use words to blur events. That is either on purpose or accidentally due to a lack of knowledge and intelligence.
Protest is an action people take, but if arrested (what you call punishment), it is not because of the protest but because they broke the law.
S. Meyer, you don’t know what “punishment” means? If you are having trouble figuring out what “punishment” means maybe you shouldn’t be engaging in complex discussions.
You make it clear you’re not running on all 4 cylinders.
I asked you, “Can you tell us what you mean by “punishment?”
Your use of words is poor, and the fact that you can’t directly answer what you mean by punishment demonstrates that your understanding of the English language is limited.
S. Meyer,
“Your use of words is poor, and the fact that you can’t directly answer what you mean by punishment demonstrates that your understanding of the English language is limited.”
If you can’t figure out what “punishment” is in the context I used then you are hopeless. You’re not smart enough to figure it out on your own. Use your brain. I don’t think you are fully capable of comprehending what you read. Better yet, ask yourself what could he mean by “punishment”? Use those critical thinking skills you learned in school? This is where you’re supposed to use it.
Once you must set your ideas on paper, you find your intelligence lacking. Years ago, I advised you to get a dictionary. You never did.
Looks like know-it-all georgie doesn’t remember all about “time, place, and manner.”
Campus rules absolutely supersede Constitutional rights.
Why for gods sake, do you insist on saying stupid shlt?
Try going into a college classroom and just start talking over the professor and see what kind of escort you get. Then file your civil rights lawsuit and see how far it goes.
There is NO constitutional right to assemble on private property. If the campus rule prevents it, its called trespassing.
Thats two of 100 examples i can give you of how stupid your comment is.
Do picketing strikers go onto the business property to March??? No, you idiot. Because their Constitutional rights dont exceed anyone elses.
Under any name, you are still the dumbest commenter ever.
“There is NO constitutional right to assemble on private property. If the campus rule prevents it, its called trespassing.”
Wherer did I say there was a constitutional right to assemble on private property?
“Students protesting as a group are punished for exercising their free speech rights.”
Thats is a lie. Name a single student convicted and punished for speaking.
You cant and you wont.
Trespassing is not free speech
Civil disobedience is not free speech.
Violent protest is not free speech.
George, if you want people to belive that its not you, you might want to stop sounding like a broken record.
In your denials of who you are, you confirmed that you were also Svelaz, who you also denied being. “Who is that?” What a coward POS
I am looking at the case in Washington State. To me it is really unsettling! Should the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church override a child’s right to end molestation and for the state to be able to arrest the molester. This case brings up lots of questions on the Church/State separation. Does the Catholic Churches freedom of religion and Cannon Law override and individual’s right to be free from molestation? We have seen how the Catholic Hierarchy has handled cases in the past so we get an idea about how they think about it considering they like to not have civil authorities and seem to protect their own from being arrested! Archdioceses of Seattle and Spokane have sued the state of Washington over Senate Bill 5375 which requires priests to report child sexual abuser? I myself was threatend with arrest when I was trying to find out the laws in another state. I can be arrested but a priest is above our constitutional law and Canon Law threatens to excommunicate a priest so it supersedes the Constitution of the United States of America. I would see a better solution. The Constitution of the United States of America should say that the Catholic Church cannot make a law that punishes a priest for reporting a crime! That would be the America I know. Are we all going to have to follow the Cannon Law if it intersects with the Constitution of the United States of America? ” Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the ordinary way cannot be forbidden to him for religious uses; and whatsoever is prejudicial to the Commonwealth in their ordinary uses and, therefore, prohibited by laws, ought not be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. For instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things in a private house to murder a child, it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice children.” Thomas Jefferson Notes on Religion, 1776
Does the state get to deputize people against their will as law-enforcement helpers? Does the state get to say most professions are immune from being coerced into being deputized as law-enforcement helpers, but only religious professionals don’t get that immunity?
Yes, that is one of the lame arguments put forth by the RCC! Can you give me an example of what professionals you are talking about! As a professional I was threatened with arrest! What professionals are above the law and what would the circumstance in which they would not have to follow the law. Maybe a defense attorney would not be required to testify in court about what his client has told him/her. Hard to think of another professional that would be above the law to not report a known abuse! Have you read the law?
Here is a link to the law:
https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Passed%20Legislature/5375.PL.pdf#page=1
Here is a provision of that law:
Except for members of the clergy, no one shall be required to report under this section when he or she obtains the information solely as a result of a privileged communication as provided in RCW 5.60.060.
Here is a link to RCW 5.60.060:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=5.60.060
So how is it wrong to conclude that the statute singles out clergy? It’s right there in black and white.
Senate Bill 5375 as passed
CLERGY–DUTY TO REPORT CHILD ABUSE
AND NEGLECT
4 Sec. 1. RCW 26.44.020 and 2024 c 298 s 5 are each amended to
5 read as follows:
6 The definitions in this section apply throughout this chapter
7 unless the context clearly requires otherwise.
8 (1) “Abuse or neglect” means sexual abuse, sexual exploitation,
9 female genital mutilation as defined in RCW 18.130.460, trafficking
10 as described in RCW 9A.40.100, sex trafficking or severe forms of
11 trafficking in persons under the trafficking victims protection act
12 of 2000, 22 U.S.C. Sec. 7101 et seq., or injury of a child by any
13 person under circumstances which cause harm to the child’s health,
14 welfare, or safety, excluding conduct permitted under RCW 9A.16.100;
15 or the negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child by a person
16 responsible for or providing care to the child. An abused child is a
17 child who has been subjected to child abuse or neglect as defined in
18 this section.
27 (18) “Member of the clergy” means any regularly licensed,
28 accredited, or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or
29 similarly situated religious or spiritual leader of any church,
30 religious denomination, religious body, spiritual community, or sect,
31 or person performing official duties that are recognized as the
32 duties of a member of the clergy under the discipline, tenets,
33 doctrine, or custom of the person’s church, religious denomination,
34 religious body, spiritual community, or sect, whether acting in an
35 individual capacity or as an employee, agent, or official of any
36 public or private organization or institution.
ACTUAL STATE LAW A PASSED
23 Sec. 2. RCW 26.44.030 and 2024 c 298 s 6 are each amended to
24 read as follows:
25 (1)(a) When any member of the clergy, practitioner, county
26 coroner or medical examiner, law enforcement officer, professional
27 school personnel, registered or licensed nurse, social service
28 counselor, psychologist, pharmacist, employee of the department of
29 children, youth, and families, licensed or certified child care
30 providers or their employees, employee of the department of social
31 and health services, juvenile probation officer, diversion unit
32 staff, placement and liaison specialist, responsible living skills
33 program staff, HOPE center staff, state family and children’s ombuds
34 or any volunteer in the ombuds’ office, or host home program has
35 reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or
36 neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to
37 be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as
38 provided in RCW 26.44.040.
Ahhhh who runs WA state? The crazy left
Try taking the numbers out. That would make it easier to read.
You didn’t deal with the carve-out for privileged communications, and the language I quoted saying that only clergy are not able to use that carve-out, whereas other professions are.
I noticed YOU failed to say what case. Yeah I’m from Wa state.
Unlike 2A and 1A assembly rights, the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious, expressive, and press rights are not limited by the Amendment’s text to rights of “the people.” It has been interpreted to protect the expressive and religious liberty rights of organizations. The text is as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I believe that those words to not refer to any institution of religion, The religious liberty in our Constitution of the United States of America refer to religious rights of the individual. The Catholic Church can construe the meaning in any way it wants. We are foolish if we allow a political/religious corporation in a foreign State tell us what our Constitutional Law is?
A corporation or organization is the people who make it up. (That, plus its assets like buildings and furniture, which have no capacity to exercise religion.)
Given the above, what would be an example of where a person in the Catholic Church is protected by the Free Exercise Clause, but the Catholic Church as an organization is not? In other words, can you give me an example of what you’re talking about?
A Catholic child that is being sexual abused (which is what the Washington law is about) And the Canon Law that will not let the priest call the authorities to arrest the abuser.
Kaine, who was born in St. Paul MN & grrew up in KS, married his fellow radical Left Harvard Law student Anne Holton, daughter of former VA Gov. Holton.. who opened the Doors for Kaine’s rise in VA… As part of the Radical Left wing chorus to-day, Kaine can’t see, as Jefferson and Adams made clear, that the USA is not a Democracy but a Republic.. a Consitutional Republic.. Kaine discompassionately embraced tearing down all of Virginia’s old statues that were apart of the struggle which made this Country stronger and greater, a testament to our Great History… so why would we expect him to understand the difference between Natural Law as defined by Western Civilization vis-a-vis the myopic Mullah natural law..?
Leave it up to a leftist like Sticky Fingers Kaine to illuminate so plainly what the Democrat Socialists really believe at the core of it. And in the process explaining their historical defense of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow. Rights as they see it, are at the whimsy of the government. And of course, just as it was in the old South, they don’t intend to just run the government, they intend to own it. Democracy in their view, is when they are in permanent control, otherwise it ain’t Democracy. And so it follows that if the government can give you rights, then most certainly and most assuredly the government can any time they wish, for any reason they want, take those rights away.
Nothing reveals the true mindset of the Socialists than Kaine’s elaborate expression of Marxist Socialist control.
———————————————
–Oddball
“Take it easy Big Joe, some of these people got sensitive feelings.”