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 Paine’s Common Sense would not be published for twenty-five years, and it was Mayhew who would lay out the moral right, if not obligation, to rebel when natural rights are denied.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.”