A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday was held for committee members to talk to and assess nominees for various posts involving foreign relations and diplomacy, including two positions with the State Department.
Among them was Riley Barnes. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Barnes has worked for the State Department in varying capacities since 2017, including as a senior speechwriter, senior advisor, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.
Barnes was nominated by President Trump on June 16th to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. During his opening statement on Wednesday, Barnes quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio from a speech he gave in the early days of his tenure:
In his first remarks to State Department employees, Secretary Rubio emphasized that, “We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator – not from our laws, not from our governments.” The Secretary went on to say that we will always be strong defenders of that principle. And that’s why the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is important. We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government.
Barnes also emphasized natural rights, noting that "These [enduring] values aren’t an endless list of 'rights' that people create and change and form to meet their own needs or desires. These values aren’t identity politics. They are the historic, natural rights that we have as individuals, pursuing life, liberty, and happiness in this world."
Hearing Barnes stress the importance of not forgetting our founding principles in ever-evolving modern times did not sit well with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), who proceeded to compare Barnes' words to something one would hear expressed by... the Iranian regime:
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. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.
The failed 2016 Democrat presidential nominee went on to state that "I'm a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights."
Not surprisingly, Kaine's comparisons of Barnes' words to the Iranian regime did not sit well with Cruz, who went off after quoting Kaine, setting him straight:
"I just walked into the hearing as he was saying that, and I almost fell out of my chair, because that 'radical and dangerous notion' — in his words — is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created," said Cruz, who went on to reference the writings of Thomas Jefferson, from Kaine's home state of Virginia.
"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator' — not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God — 'with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"
Watch:
https://x.com/tedcruz/status/1963299914034663825
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
It is slightly different to invoke God as the source of these rights, but the gist of it, whether you're religious or secular, is the same: The government does not grant these rights as it chooses, these rights are innate and inviolable, and therefore the government may not steal away these rights, even if it finds them deeply inconvenient.
Adding God into the mix helps secure them, because people will tend to physically fight if someone attempts to steal away God-given rights, and that's a positive thing when it comes to your most basic, fundamental political rights.
Tim Kaine, and all other Democrats, do not want to acknowledge God because they are, whether they realize it or not, Satanists. But the practical reason they want to contradict the Founding Father's own statement that these rights derive from God is because they seek to undo these rights, so they argue that they can increase or decrease your rights as easily as they can increase or decrease the top marginal income tax rates. God's got nothing to do with it, you see, so you have no argument against the state stripping you of your rights.
The Declaration and Constitution are a covenant, and agreement by which the people consent to be governed, and if the terms of that covenant are violated, then the consent to be governed is withdrawn and we may ignore it and physically oppose it.
Otherwise, the government can just alter the terms of our agreement at its own self-interested whim.
Kaine goes even further, and declares that anyone who disagrees and believes that rights derive from God and are therefore inviolable, no matter how much a transitory government wants to violate them, is the equivalent of an Allah-besotted mullah or terrorist in Iran.
And of course Kaine rejects the idea that if the government steals away these rights -- that is, that it becomes "destructive to these ends" of securing liberty -- then that government has forfeited its legitimacy and may justifiably be rebelled against.
The government owns you. It owns you, it owns your children, it owns your souls, it owns your children's souls, and you just have to accept that, Peasant.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/416344.php
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