Anastasia Brown<\/a> · Contributing Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\nTen years ago, Tim Kaine nearly became vice president of the United States as Hilary Clinton’s running mate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, the Democrat senator is stirring controversy with public claims that undermine the very principles on which America was founded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During a Senate confirmation hearing, Riley Barnes, who has been nominated to serve as the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, was quoted paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barnes told the committee, “All men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator \u2014 not from our laws, not from our governments \u2026 We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity \u2026 This is a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kaine fired back in a four-minute response that railed against the Trump nominee and rejected the founding presuppositions of the Declaration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the Creator \u2014 that’s what the Iranian government believes,” Kaine said. “(The Iranian government is) a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bah\u00e1’\u00eds, 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 \u2026 (and) does not create a place of safety or comfort for folks,” he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senator Kaine’s comments come from a philosophy of “legal positivism,” which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines as a “thesis that the existence and content of law depends on social facts and not on its merits.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legal positivism undermines any inherent or “natural” laws of truth and justice and instead enshrines human governments, lawmakers and other “social facts” as the final definers of law. Unfortunately, this conclusion divorces God from the public sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senator Kaine continued his statement: “The motto above the Supreme Court is ‘equal justice under law.’ The oath that you and I take (is a) pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not arbitrarily defined natural rights. People of any religious tradition, or none, are entitled to the equal protection under the laws of the 14th Amendment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kaine’s dismissal of natural rights is where his claims become untenable. After all, the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution and later lawmakers who adopted the amendments did so with the understanding that they were only articulating truths already in existence within the weave of the world \u2013 truths written first by the Creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without a Creator or natural law to turn to as a source, Senator Kaine has very few laws or rights of citizens that he can back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The “arbitrarily defined” natural rights which he is attempting to undermine can only be replaced by even more arbitrarily defined manmade laws that can be written and rewritten by anyone with sufficient political power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The obvious inconsistencies in Kaine’s thinking are only compounded by various other conclusions he attempts to draw with no basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wants the same conclusion as Riley Barnes \u2013 a world where citizens are entitled to inalienable rights that result in indisputable equality. But without natural rights embedded in our world, Kaine has no basis on which to draw these conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two hundred and fifty years ago, facing similar complaints as those lodged by Senator Kaine, Alexander Hamilton wrote: \u201cThe sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laws, on their own, cannot claim to create \u201cinalienable rights,\u201d since laws can be undermined or overturned. Instead, Hamilton concludes, \u201c(Rights) 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tim Kaine is wrong: Our rights do come from God<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[99,32,29],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-anastasia-brown","tag-issue-2025-10-03","tag-perspectives"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Tim Kaine is wrong: Our rights do come from God","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1955,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}