Every so often, a leading Democrat accidentally says what the party truly believes behind closed doors. They let the mask slip, revealing an ideology that sees the American founding not as a source of wisdom, but as an obstacle to be overcome. We just got another one of those moments—a stunning admission that the modern Democratic Party is fundamentally at odds with a key principle of the founding of our nation, and I’m sure it won’t shock you a bit.
During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-W.V.) said the quiet part out loud.
“The notion that rights don't come from laws, and don't come from the government, but come from the Creator,” he said.
And that’s not even the worst part.
“That's what the Iranian government believes,” he continued. “So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”
Think about that for a moment. A sitting U.S. senator, a former vice presidential candidate no less, just equated the very foundation of American liberty with the oppressive religious dictatorship in Tehran. That’s not just historically illiterate—it’s a direct attack on the very DNA of the United States and what it means to be an American.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), was flabbergasted by what he heard, and wasted no time in setting the record straight.
“So, Senator Kaine said in this hearing, that he found it a radical and dangerous notion that you would say our rights came from God and not from government,” Cruz recounted, admitting he nearly fell out of his chair in disbelief. To remind his colleagues—and Kaine in particular—Cruz pointed back to Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator… not by the government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God.” Exactly right.
Our rights don’t come from government or the DNC.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 3, 2025
They come from God. @timkaine, I suggest the Dems go back and read the words of our Founding Fathers. pic.twitter.com/QRmhTcbbOH
What Kaine chose to call “troubling” is not some fringe idea cooked up by religious conservatives in recent years. It is the cornerstone of America’s existence. The Founders made it unmistakably clear: our rights—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness—are not privileges granted by bureaucrats or lawmakers. They are gifts from God, permanent and unchanging. And if they come from God, no politician, no party, and no ruling class can take them away. That’s the whole point.
Contrast this with the European model that the Founders deliberately rejected. For centuries, monarchs claimed to rule with divine authority, handing out “rights” or “privileges” to their subjects as they saw fit. If the crown gave you something, the crown could also take it back. America flipped that model on its head. Instead of government being the source of freedom, government was to exist only to safeguard freedoms people already had. Jefferson’s phrasing in the Declaration of Independence isn’t poetic flourish—it’s a firm rejection of government as giver of rights. Governments are instituted to secure what God has already given, not to dish out liberties like favors from some benevolent overlord.
That’s the radical brilliance of America, and why Kaine’s remarks are so dangerous. If rights don’t come from God, the only alternative is government—and whatever government gives, it can take away. Essentially meanning that government is the higher power the people answer to. That means your freedom depends entirely on who holds power and what ideology controls the state. That isn’t liberty. It’s dependency.
Moments like this reveal the left’s worldview: they treat government as a sort of deity, the ultimate judge of good and evil, freedom and oppression. But the Founders built America on the opposite premise. They anchored rights in God precisely so no politician or party could redefine them. We’ve seen power go back and forth between political parties with different agendas, but our fundamental rights have remained intact… mostly.
By dismissing that as “troubling,” Kaine sets himself, and frankly his entire party, against the Founders, against the very charter of our nation, and against the principle that separates liberty from tyranny.
That’s your modern Democratic Party.
