Tim Kaine, Virginia’s junior Senator decided to assert himself. At a Senate hearing for the nominee to be assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights, and labor, he pushed back against the nominee, Mr. Riley Barnes. Mr Barnes apparently committed the grave offense of uttering a politically incorrect opinion. He said “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.”
The Senator, incredibly, decided to take issue with that opinion. He said in response “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,” Kaine said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities.”
He went on to dig himself a deeper hole by saying “So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.” He then went on to say that he (Kaine) was a [“strong believer in natural rights”] but noted that if natural rights were to be debated by people within the committee room with different views and religious traditions, [“there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”]
Where to begin.
Let’s start with this: Mr Barnes is precisely correct. You don’t have to take my word for it—you might try out what another Virginian by the name of Thomas Jefferson had to say on the subject. Mr Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, said in that document that “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…”.
That would seem to settle that.
Beyond the narrow historical point that seems to have eluded Mr Kaine is a far more troubling issue. The good Senator seems to believe that we have, for instance, free speech and equality before the law solely because he as a sitting Senator joined the majority in saying so. After all, how else are we to interpret Kaine’s insistence that our rights actually come from government, not externally. And how does Mr Kaine square government’s denial of equality before the law in the Jim Crow South with his insistence that rights emanate from that very same government?
Leaving all that aside, Mr Kaine claims that he is a “strong believer in natural rights”. Except that it takes only a moment’s reflection to dismiss his claim (strong believer or not). It is perfectly obvious to everyone (excepting of course Mr Kaine), that any claims to natural rights depend on inherency. Their existence does not, and can not, depend on government. Moreover it should be clear that there is an inherent tension between government and rights.
Which brings up another point. In the Declaration Jefferson made the point that Governments are instituted among men to secure—not to grant–these rights. Moreover he said, Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. But when government becomes destructive of the goal of securing these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.
And then there is Mr Kaine’s unfortunate inability to distinguish between the how the US and Iran differentiate between church and state. By way of (tortured) explanation he says of the notion that rights come from the Creator not government “…that’s what the Iranian government believes…”. So by implication, someone who believes in natural rights (as Mr Kaine claims, see above), is just another bloodthirsty killer.
Let’s not belabor the point. Senator Kaine made an unforced error. Rather than figure out a way to back out gracefully he decided to dig himself in deeper.
That leaves the residual question of what Mr Kaine actually believes. The citizens he claims to represent really are entitled to know. If he actually believes our fundamental rights really do emanate from government we should be aware of that fact. If so we should understand that this whole business was more than an embarrassment, but a governing philosophy. And then we have something to worry about.
JFB
