Posted on 09/06/2025 4:54:46 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Tim Kaine’s attack on Marco Rubio backfired, exposing his ignorance of natural rights, the American Founding, and the very Western civilization he claims to defend.
The other day, Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia (of all places), created a social media storm when he tried to score a few points by knocking Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio had apparently made a statement about man’s rights being granted to him by God, and that made Kaine unhappy. So, he responded:
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.
As every nominally educated Tom, Dick, and Harry pointed out almost immediately on Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and heaven knows where else, Kaine was not just wrong in his attempted scolding of Secretary Rubio; he was profoundly, utterly, and totally wrong. He was wrong about every aspect of political theory and history his rant addressed. He was wrong about the nature of rights. He was wrong about the American Founding. He was wrong about the Islamic “Republic” of Iran. And he was wrong about the nature of Western civilization. He could not possibly have been more wrong if he’d tried.
The good news is that regular readers of this column didn’t need to be told that Kaine was wrong about the nature of rights because we had that very discussion in this space last week. In brief, conservatives and classical liberals believe principally in “negative” rights, those which are, indeed, endowed by our Creator and considered inalienable. Leftists, by contrast, tend to favor positive rights, those that are given to them/us by government and that can also be taken away by government. Kaine is a leftist, meaning it’s hardly surprising that he wouldn’t know the difference between the two or have much use for negative liberty and rights.
The better news is that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz happened to walk in on Kaine’s display of ignorance and promptly pointed out to him that the leftist vision of rights is incompatible with the American Founding. As Cruz noted, Secretary Rubio’s position was identical to that taken by the Founders and expressed as clearly and inarguably as possible in a passage from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that every schoolboy (and certainly every former governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia) should have memorized (emphasis added): “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 collective internet swiftly took care of explaining Kaine’s mistaken understanding of the Islamic Republic, meaning that the best news of all is that Kaine’s dim-witted understanding of Western Civilization is, more or less, the only one of his mistakes that still needs correction. And so…here goes (in brief).
“The West,” as we understand the term, is a unique blend of traditions, all of which flourished in the Mediterranean region two to five thousand years ago. This blend—a mix of classic Greek and Roman cultures and especially the Jewish and Christian religious traditions—fostered a civilization that was unlike any in the history of man, established on two bedrock principles: that all individuals are equal and important before God and that there are commandments that transcend human traditions and conventions that apply to all individuals equally, at all times, and in all places.
These two foundational values—the irreproachable worth of the individual and the transcendence of natural law—have their seeds in Jewish and Greek conventions and are embodied in two of the most celebrated quotes in all of written history, the first from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Jeremiah and the second from Sophocles’ drama “Antigone.” They are as follows:
< i>Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you.
And:
Creon: And still you had the gall to break this law?
Antigone: Of course, I did. It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation—not to me. Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men. Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. They are alive, not just today or yesterday: they live forever, from the first of time, and no one knows when they first saw the light. These laws—I was not about to break them, not out of fear of some man’s wounded pride.”
These traditions, plus the New Testament—the Gospels and the letters of Paul—were interpreted and clarified by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who integrated Platonic and Aristotelian concepts, respectively, into Christian theology. All of this formed the foundation of a civilization dedicated to the Jeffersonian notions identified above.
This civilization—Western civilization—was summed up succinctly and poignantly by one of its last true heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., who in 1963 put it this way in his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”:
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights [emphasis added] . . . Now . . . how does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
All of this and more—much, much more—is the inheritance of the West. Aquinas and Bracton begat Fortescue, who, in turn, begat Jefferson, Madison, and the political apotheosis of natural law and individual liberty. Likewise, the Reformation begat John Calvin and the Scottish Presbyterians, who, in turn, begat David Ricardo and Adam Smith and the economic apotheosis of natural law and liberty.
Tim Kaine and his compatriots on the left despise the notion that man’s rights are endowed by his Creator for a handful of reasons. First, and most practically, there are some rights they dislike intensely and want to be able to take away from their fellow citizens. If, in the American tradition, rights are deemed to come from God, then they know good and well that they’ll never be able to take them fully and permanently.
Second, they absolutely hate the idea that religion might have had anything to do with the Founding and with the great American Experiment. Jefferson was a deist, they shriek, and Madison rarely went to church! This is a secular nation, they insist. They’re wrong, of course, but that won’t stop them from insisting otherwise. The Founders may not have been personally religious, but the civilization into which they were born, the very waters in which they swam, were overtly and inarguably religious.
Finally, those on the left have been conditioned to loathe the idea that any culture might be better or more conducive to human flourishing than any other. And certainly, they don’t want to believe that Western Civilization might have come to a more righteous and civilized understanding of man’s nature and what James Q. Wilson called “The Moral Sense” than other cultures. If rights come from God, but not all cultures believe in and defend the same rights, then somebody must be wrong. And the contemporary left cannot tolerate the idea that Westerners might be right while non-Westerners might be wrong. That’s inimical to everything they have been taught to believe.
In short, Tim Kaine is neither dumb nor alone. He is representative of a political faction that is sizable, stubborn, and woefully maleducated.
I think most drmocRATs worship the state so Tim seems correct to them.
And we’re expected to co-exist with these ignorant, communist basstids?
I don’t think Kaine is very bright or he would see that his position is self-contradictory.
Claiming that inherent and inalienable rights come from government undermines their very nature, as governments, being transient and fallible, can alter or revoke them, or if such government ceases to exist, your inherent and inalienable rights disappear with it.
True inalienable rights, as understood by the Founders, exist independently of any institution, rooted in natural law or a Creator. If rights depend on government, they’re neither inherent nor inalienable—they’re just temporary permissions, subject to the state’s whim.
BTTT
This is an excellent time to discuss the source of our rights. The law may say I have to retreat in my house, but my natural right is I do not have to allow anyone to take my life or harm me for any reason.
Recommended reading on the Greek/Hebrew syncretism: William Barrett’s “Irrational Man,” the chapter on Hebraism and Hellenism.
And of course, Sophocles’ “Antigone,” one of the most perfect dramas ever.
You’ll thank me! :)
He forgot Locke.
“interpreted and clarified by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who integrated Platonic and Aristotelian concepts, respectively, into Christian theology.” Not so much. Papacy was rejected by founding generations for 150 + years. Soukup doesn’t even recall Kaine was Hillary’s VP pick , which would have added to the clout of his indictment.
I think the essay missed the point.
Up until the Declaration, the Euroweenies had held that the theory of the Divine Right of Kings gave them the God given right govern.
In Our Declaration “We the people” claimed the divine right to govern with this proclamation “are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights,”.
In the 250 years since the aristocracy of the Euroweenies was overthrown, it has been replaced with a toxic mix of elites which claim the right to govern not on theism but a secular humanism.
These elites are the usual suspects: oligarchs, media elites, academic elites, bureaucratic elites et al.
In summary nothing more than Godless and Hell bound tools of Satan.
Claiming that inherent and inalienable rights come from government undermines their very nature, as governments, being transient and fallible, can alter or revoke them, or if such government ceases to exist, your inherent and inalienable rights disappear with it.
Rather, in his view, rights are what governments grant at any particular moment in time, and are by nature, alienable and transitory.
The most recent demonstration of what ignorant jackasses Democrats are was the hearing with Robert Kennedy. From Elizabeth Warren to that Warlock guy from Georgia and the total moron from New Mexico who said he wasn’t giving Kennedy his little starfish pin because Kennedy “didn’t deserve it”—I can’t imagine a better display of the imbecility Conservatives are up against.
It’s a disgrace that these people are in government. It’s an even greater disgrace that there are people in this country who actually voted for them. If they are in the majority, this country is doomed.
Rights that government gives you can be taken away by government.
Ping
So many people now think that these are the only words in the Declaration of Independence.
The above sentence refers to "rights", and specifically to one "right."
It is the right to independence; The Right to disassociate your people from a government which your people see as no longer serving their interests.
The right to secede.
I think that there’s another thing going here with Kaine and his friends. Everybody knows we all came from somewhere, both individually and collectively. Their idea of separation of church and state means that the govt has to be based on an atheistic view - that the Creator of mankind is evolution and the Creator of individuals is their mother. That leads to two understandings that are incompatible with what the Founders actually said and that western civilization is founded on, as this article describes.
The first is that people are just like insects - no more, no less. The left throws around the word “Nazi” a lot but they fail to grasp the basic concept that brought forth the holocaust: people are like insects and if we are truly scientific we will “select” the right kind of people to be in the breeding pool, with no more concern for those destroyed than we have for mosquitoes we swat just because they’re uncomfortable to us.
And secondly, at the personal level that means that if the creator/owner of a child is inconvenienced by that child they can swat it to death just as easily. And the child’s “creator” is its mother.
That is the liberal view, and they will never wander from that.
The trouble is that it basically means the law of the jungle. In that view there is no coherent reason to have a law against murder, infanticide, theft, or anything else. Whatever a mosquito or a virus can do, humans can do because we are just overgrown viruses and “Nature” (without “Nature’s God”) says whoever is fittest survives. In this view the only form of government that can exist is tyranny, because there is no rationally-consistent basis for any laws that a government makes because there is no moral reason for a government’s existence.
I remember pro-abort mayor of Minneapolis Sharon Sayles-Belton ironically and totally without self-awareness fuming after a senseless murder: “Why is there no sanctity of human life?”
Sharon, it’s because the whole worldview that your side espouses leaves no room for the sanctity of ANYTHING. Just because you say you value the life of the person who was “senselessly killed” doesn’t mean that life means diddly-squat in reality OR that anybody else has to value it at all. They were obviously weaker than the one who killed them so they deserved to be weeded out of the gene pool, according to Almighty Evolution. And you know that is what you believe because you say the very same thing about the aborted children whose mothers didn’t value their lives. You say it’s nobody else’s business because the mother is stronger than the child and can do what she wants as a sacred “right”. The value of that child’s life is just a matter of opinion, and only the mother’s opinion matters. And what these people will never realize is that in this set-up laws are just another opinion, one group imposing their opinions on everybody else in tyrannical fashion.
Kaine seems to argue that only governments can impose their opinions while not realizing that the very sharia law he decries is just a government imposing its opinions on everybody else. Maybe he thinks that a government is only legitimate when it imposes NON-RELIGION. But that’s exactly what Adolf Hitler did, and the democrat party is fully in line with the worldview of Hitler.
The Constitution forbids the government from engaging in theological controversies. But the Founders very clearly consider the sanctity of human life because of the will of the Creator as totally uncontroversial. It is “self-evident”. If human life is as worthless as a bug, civilization itself has no moral authority to impose any rules. And when it’s all just opinions, the lowly vagabonds know that and will act accordingly. Any crook can justifiably ask the government, “Why does your opinion of this person’s life matter more than my own opinion? Who made you the boss of me?”
These are concepts that the whole dumbed-down, brainwashed society needs to come to terms with. If the child in the womb has no sanctity based on the will of its Creator, then neither does the raped girl, the robbed elites, or the lowest slave. It’s all just the privileged/powerful tyrannically imposing their opinions by use of force.
Yes. I should have read the article more carefully instead of just scanning it quickly.;-)
POS Timmy Kaine, once in line for Number Two on the other team.
Timmy is Number Two, all right. He just never flushed.
Appallingly ignorant of the founding of this nation. So sure Kaine was in his own response. Unfortunately, I think most in US Government employ are at the same level of knowledge as Kaine.
A core belief of Progressive ideology is that either there is not God or if a God exists, he plays no part in the affairs of men.
Progressives thus move government to the position of “god on earth”, or themselves as “god”.
It is one of the reasons they hate any limitation on government power.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.