Last year, I wrote a column rebutting Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D., Va.) attack on a nominee for expressing his belief in natural rights that derive from God, not the government. (He later backtracked after a public outcry). Now, MSNOW host Katy Tur seems to be echoing the same concern over Speaker Mike Johnson expressing his faith in natural rights at the “Rededicate 250” rally on the mall in Washington, DC.
Those voices have seeked to distort the self-evident truth that we know so well, that our founders boldly proclaimed in the Declaration: That our rights do not derive from the government. They come from you, our creator and heavenly father.
The line clearly caused Tur some alarm. The host raised it with the show’s panelists:
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?
It is an astonishing question given that express reliance on God as the source for the rights declared in that document.
In my new book, 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. Ours was the world’s first major Enlightenment revolution based on those very natural rights.
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.”
The view stated by Kaine 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.”
The irony is that the acknowledgment of natural rights does not “put God over the Declaration of Independence.” It is the very premise of that Declaration.
As I discuss in the book, the right of the colonists to rebel was a major question debated before the Revolution. Loyalists would often cite Romans 13, in which Paul the Apostle reminds Christians that they must obey civil authorities and be loyal subjects. It would be Reverend Jonathan Mayhew to put this argument to bed, using his pulpit at Boston’s Old West Church to explore the moral foundations for both fealty and rebellion for citizens:
“His published sermon “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers” was given on January 30, 1750, and proved to be one of the most significant publications leading up to the Revolution. Paine’s Common Sense would not be published for twenty-five years, and it was Mayhew who would lay out the moral right, if not obligation, to rebel when natural rights are denied. Mayhew gave the lecture on the one hundredth anniversary of the execution of Charles I, who was experiencing a revival in the minds of many as a martyr.
Mayhew would have none of it and laid out the “general nature and end of magistracy” for a people denied the rights given to them by the Creator. He directly took on the oft-cited biblical authority for those demanding blind loyalty to the King: Romans 13. In the chapter, Paul the Apostle reminds Christians that they must obey the civil authorities and be loyal subjects. The use of this passage, he argued, was a blasphemy in suggesting that a tyrant violating the very natural laws set by God could be treated as “God’s Minister.” To the contrary, there is a moral obligation to oppose such tyrants in defense of God-given rights.”
The Revolution was fought over natural rights that belonged to colonists as human beings, bestowed by God and defended by the American Revolution. The Constitution created a system that guaranteed the protection of those rights contained in the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker Johnson was speaking directly to the foundation of this Republic in reaffirming his faith in natural rights. Of course, the rejection of natural rights in academia and politics is consistent with the view that our rights evolve with a “living Constitution.” What the government giveth, the government may taketh away.
The debate reflected in Tur’s comments could not be more timely or elemental on our 250th anniversary. We must again decide not just who we were then but who we are now as Americans. There are many who want to decouple our system from natural rights as they “reimagine” American democracy and “trash” the American Constitution. It is the same Siren’s Call heard at the founding. That is precisely why Franklin was right that this remains our Republic “if [we] can keep it.”
“The Revolution was fought over natural rights that belonged to colonists as human beings, bestowed by God and defended by the American Revolution. ”
Yes, mainly the right to keep people enslaved. This was something that was rapidly fading in the British Empire as it was seen as immoral. But Freedom Loving Future Americans wanted to freedom to prevent losing their low cost forced labor camps.
God, as has been the case for thousands of years, has yet to make a well documented appearance on His own behalf, suggesting that God is a construct to control people in a hierarchy with the few at the top using that to also control the wealth and direct it to themselves. It’s a quite convenient belief.
Yes
Looking around the world, comparing the rights enjoyed in the USA to Africa and the Middle East, an obvious question arises: If rights come from God, why is the allocation and enjoyment of rights so uneven? I can point to numerous countries that are more religiously pious than the USA that are stuck in corrupt impoverishment and injustice.
Critical thinking points to elements of culture, business law, behavioral norms and governing structures as the factors correlating with human rights. The question of how rights are upheld and defended comes into focus — claiming that good government isn’t essential to securing rights? — that’s as naive sounding as “defund the police”. The Preamble talks about “securing the blessings of liberties to ourselves and our posterity” as the reason for establishing government.
And my understanding of the Deist belief of our Founders doesn’t comport with Mike Johnson’s. They believed that God played a major hand in creating the world and its panoply of beings. But, they believed God was hands off in the daily activities and political choices of 18th century people. They ceded to themselves the agency to remake government as good as they possibly could, with the caveat that only a moral population would be capable of self-government.
This belief system rejected Divine Right of the king, and cleared the table for secular government. Maybe that gave rise to the claim that natural rights flow from God (circumventing the intermediation of a monarch who could have you beheaded on a whim). But once secular government was established, began conferring law enforcement and justice, and individuals felt more secure in their rights, that same argument is uncomfortably close to ungrateful — it says “we don’t have to be cooperative with this government either”.