The Kaine Mutiny

Every so often, a politician says something that makes you stop the car, pull over, and ask yourself if you really heard it right. That happened this week when Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia declared that our rights do not come from God, or from nature, but from government.

If that is true, then Jefferson got it wrong. Madison got it wrong. Franklin and Adams got it wrong. The Revolution itself was a misunderstanding. Because the entire American experiment rests on the opposite idea. Rights exist first. Government exists second. And the only reason we put up with government at all is so that it can secure those rights.

That is not my invention, that is what Jefferson wrote in 1776. “All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were not dreamed up in Philadelphia, they were recognized there. Jefferson made sure to point that out again in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He wrote that Almighty God created the mind free, and that the rights of conscience are natural rights of mankind. Not government’s gift. Not a favor from kings or legislatures. A right that belongs to you simply because you exist.

So if Kaine is right, what happens when government decides you do not deserve your rights anymore? What happens when Congress votes that your speech is too dangerous, or that your worship is too extreme, or that your property is too large? If government is the source, then government is also the executioner. History is filled with rulers who thought that way. King George III believed rights were his to grant or revoke. Stalin and Mao thought the same. It never ends well.

The danger here is not just Tim Kaine. He is only the most recent voice to say it out loud. The deeper danger is that we as Americans may have forgotten the Jeffersonian idea. Rights are not political favors. They are natural, permanent, and universal. They belong to the Jew and the Christian, the Muslim and the Hindu, the believer and the skeptic. And when government forgets its role, it is our responsibility to remind it.

That is the heart of today’s Dave Does History conversation with Bill Mick. The “Kaine Mutiny” is not about one senator from Virginia. It is about whether America still believes the truth that gave us independence. Jefferson answered Kaine 249 years ago, and his answer still rings today: government does not create liberty, it secures it.