I have long been an avid reader of the columns of Mr. Jarrett Stepman, who regularly appears over at the Daily Signal. I cannot recommend him highly enough.
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Recently, Mr. Stepman wrote about how a stupefied MS NOW anchor, Katy Tur, pooh-poohed the idea that Americans possess God-given, unalienable rights: “What about this passage from [House Speaker] Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government; they come from you, our Creator and Heavenly Father? Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?”
Mr. Stepman kindly reminded this on-screen epitome of the “smart party” that “the concept that God is ‘above’ the Declaration of Independence is . . . in the Declaration of Independence.” He elaborated on this point as follows: “God’s law supersedes man’s law. Governments that deprive citizens of rights endowed by their Creator without due process are bad governments and are possibly illegitimate. That’s the whole point of the thing, right?”
Indeed, it is. This is why most Americans acknowledge and celebrate the fact that they possess rights that no legitimate government can curtail or quash.
And this is also why the Left loathes the concept of God-given, unalienable rights, seeing the concept as a superstitious, archaic obstacle to be overcome as, in their hubris, they seek—by any means necessary—to remake humanity into the utopia they’ve conjured out of their secular, soulless, socialist ideology.
Thus, we live in a time when the Left daily assails the traditional bipartisan belief that Americans possess God-given, unalienable rights that are beyond the reach of a government limited to enumerated powers requiring the consent of the governed. Aptly, Mr. Stepman cites this example:
In 2024, the now former Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla went on the network and said that the only people who believe in “God-given rights” that don’t come from the government are “Christian Nationalists,” whom she distinguished from other “Christians.” At least Przybyla later sort of apologized for these remarks. . . .
Yet, these are not isolated instances of ignorance, though ignorance certainly plays its part. Rather, they are part of a deliberate campaign to stigmatize Americans who, like generations before them, correctly believe their rights are God-given and unalienable; and that the people a. By branding such citizens “Christian Nationalists,” the Left portrays them as a menace to “our democracy” and as potential domestic terrorists liable to violence at any moment.
The fact that “Christian Nationalist”—which is just another way of saying someone believes in “God and country”—is treated as a slur reveals the Left’s larger project. The Left wants to strip away Americans’ God-given, unalienable rights and replace them with a secular, socialist state that rules without limits and without the consent of the governed.
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In this vision, majority rule is merely a temporary mechanism for consolidating permanent power—a waypoint on the road to subservience under an ever-expanding administrative state.
As Mr. Stepman trenchantly observes:
The concept of God-given rights was essential to the Founders’ justification for the American Revolution. The Framers designed our government not so that it would give rights but so that it could protect them as best as could be done in the imperfect world we live in.
But if the standard for free speech is simply a matter of who has the most governmental or institutional power, then I find it doubtful that anyone will have freedom of any kind at the end of our country’s next 250 years of existence, or that we’ll even have a country.
Put bluntly, the Left seeks to replace the virtuous verity of a belief in “God and Country” with submission to “Secularism and State.” As such, the “progressive” movement is actually regressive, reactionary, and counterrevolutionary. It is nothing less than an attempt to end America’s revolutionary experiment in self-government and replace it with the rule of an elitist, “expert” class—that is, the secular and socialist administrative state. Somewhere, King George III is smiling.
The battle between an individual’s God-given rights and an omnipotent state is an ancient one; and it is one the American Revolution firmly decided in favor of the individual, not the emperor, in favor of the citizen over the state.
Responding at the time to Mr. Stepman’s article, I posted on X a quotation from a famous “Christian Nationalist”: “The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
It is not hard to imagine what President John F. Kennedy would think knowing that, even after the Soviet Union entered the dustbin of history, America’s revolutionary belief in God-given rights is now embattled here at home.
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003 to 2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a cohost of The John Batchelor Show, among sundry media appearances.
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