Sen. Kaine is dangerous
“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.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Two things should have come to mind when the senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia said these words during a hearing a fortnight ago: first, that he should be nowhere near the levers of power; and second, when a person tells you who he is, believe him.
Sen. Tim Kaine is either a Constitutional and Historical illiterate, or he is showing his political leanings. As he is a lawyer with his Juris Doctorate from Harvard, we think the first is less likely. So, we can only believe he is telling us his political philosophy – and he should never, ever be near the levers of power.
While Kaine wants to equate theocracy with an extreme belief that is not about rights, but rule, he is saying that laws and the state are the genesis of our rights, not a natural part of our existence. He is taking an extreme stance that is held by left wing dictatorships of the fascist and communistic brand.
We would like to think the Democratic Party would repudiate such a stance, but, alas, more than two weeks after it was uttered, not one member of his party has taken him to task. It is an important tenet of the American Experiment that liberty, the freedoms, and responsibilities we have as a self-governing people, derive our rights not from the state, or kings or politicians, but from a higher force.
Thomas Jefferson, a fellow Virginian to Kaine, made that explicitly clear in the Declaration of Independence because we were moving away from the Divine Right of Kings, and into the idea that individual liberty is a God-given right. The Founding Fathers were united in this belief that rights were derived from a Just God, no matter how one defines that in a theological way. A quick lesson in civics might disabuse the senator from his ill-conceived notion.
To believe what Kaine is espousing – at least in his rhetoric – the Biblical diktat, “The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away, Blest be the Name of the Lord, becomes, The State Giveth and the State Taketh Away, Blest be the Name of the State.” That, boys and girls, is the recipe for tyranny. What the state gives, it can un-give.
We are seeing just such a thing happening in Europe, with thought and word now reason for police interdiction and arrest. People are put in prison for having made statements the government believes are threatening – and the list of those hurt by the threats are ever-changing.
The left wing of the Democratic Party, we fear, is like minded when it comes to what Kaine said in the Senate conference room. The party espouses laws to limit thought and speech, and the taking away of those rights enumerated in the Constitution and elsewhere. Power is the name of the game, and it must be secured. If a few rights must be lost in the process, oh well.
Sen. Kaine has been roundly criticized for his idiotic remark, but closer to home, we would bet our two senators, Blumenthal and Murphy, would agree, based on their own pronouncements. Let us hope men like Kaine are kept away from power positions in the short- and long-term. They are a dangerous lot.