Tim Kaine on the Origin of Rights

Kaine graduated from Rockhurst High, a Jesuit school. I've known many Rockhurst graduates, most of whom were atheists as a result of their "religion" classes at Rockhurst.

From Crisis

By John M. Grondelski, PhD

The discussion about the origin of “rights” often conflates situational privileges, such as the “right of way,” with universal, God-given, natural rights that exist independent of governments.

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine’s remarks that the idea rights come from God is a “theocratic” notion representative of the mindset of Iranian ayatollahs is the latest controversy lighting up social media. One might be tempted to dismiss it as momentary outrage clickbait, but resist the temptation. Why?

First, because the claim is not true. It is neither Catholic nor American.

It is not Catholic because the Church has always affirmed that certain human rights exist prior to any political order. They belong to man because he is man, because he is made in the image and likeness of God. Their violation is recognized first and most importantly by human beings according to “the law written in man’s heart,” not the law enacted by the Code of Virginia. 

Would the willful murder of a caveman by another caveman have not been a violation of rights because there was no Neanderthal Republic to proscribe it?

It is not American because it violates the very core thesis of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the senator might reread the scribblings of his fellow Virginian, who made it clear that the violation of man’s pre-political rights entitled a sovereign’s subjects to overthrow that order. In other words, governments recognize rights; they don’t create them.

There’s a reason the Declaration of Independence has been called America’s first Constitution. One of Kaine’s apologists cited the Constitution as having a Bill of Rights. Well, yes, it does—and that Bill of Rights was added to make it perfectly clear that this new political arrangement could not trample rights that preexisted it (about which the ninth and 10th Amendments are explicit).  

Kaine took a particular shot at natural law, blaming its interpretation on creedal allegiances, indicating his ignorance of the Catholic natural law tradition. Natural law is binding precisely because it transcends religious differences: the only required allegiance is being human.  

Democrats have been making natural law some doctrinal oddity, however, since 1991 when “Catholics” Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy launched an all-out attack on then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas for praising it. Accepting natural law on Catholic terms requires abandoning the dictatorship of relativism, without which Democrats (especially those parading their “Catholic” credentials) get into trouble while advocating the party’s lifestyle libertinism.

One might expect something better from Tim Kaine. He was, after all, a graduate of a Jesuit high school and spent a year in Honduras with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. If this is the vision of “faith” that Pedro Arrupe’s “struggle for justice” instilled in the young man, the Society might consider going back to the drawing board for such a failure.

Many of the usual suspects, of course, came to Kaine’s defense, asking why this remark generated such controversy when Trump allegedly undermines “Catholic teaching” so thoroughly. Whether Donald Trump is the supposed wrecking ball to Catholic teaching some claim is debatable (I think not), but—unlike Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Mario Cuomo, et al.—he never said he was a Catholic. Contrast that to the latter trio, who wanted to trade on Catholic identity for votes while undermining Catholic teaching in practice. In any event, Tim Kaine should know enough Catholic social thought to realize we hold to natural, not positive, law: rights come from nature, not legal grant. 

Why will I not let these remarks blow over? Because they betray a certain Democratic mindset that needs to be exposed.  

Five years ago, in this journal, I wrote about the musings of Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor who wanted to outlaw homeschooling because she claimed it gave children an inadequate education. That education was skewed, she said, because homeschooling parents failed to “expose” their children to the “range” of modern social opinion (i.e., the dictatorship of relativism) the monopoly public school plantation regularly instills as “life in community.”  

Among those who came to Professor Bartholet’s defense was a lawyer who argued that “parenthood” is actually only a “legal” construct. You are X’s “parent” because the law confers that status. Forget that biological relationship; Virginia makes you a parent. Virginia says what your rights can be: this year, you still can theoretically insist on consenting to your minor daughter’s abortion (except if she goes to Fairfax County Public Schools), but next year, Democrats hope to take that right away. Parenthood is the invention of the state: neither the genetic parent nor gestating woman in a child trafficking (aka “surrogacy”) contract are “parents,” only the recipients with the checking account.  

And make no mistake about it: in the effort to trample your parental rights, there is going to be plenty of push about how the state can regulate you. Illinois wants to regulate homeschooling thoroughly. New Jersey Democrats just introduced legislation demanding homeschoolers include DEI components. California Democrats have bills pending to allow a state judge to let a minor child change his name even over parental objections.  
If your rights are the creatures of the state, rather than some “theocratic” idea, it’s all possible.

So, ask yourself: Do you really believe your rights come from the government? Because if you do, it means they depend on the lights of such luminaries as Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and others.

I’ll take the “theocracy.”

Pictured: Tim Kaine, Apostate