Endowed by our Creator

In a Sept. 3, 2025 hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said: “the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling,”

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

In America, rights don’t trickle down from politicians. They aren’t favors handed out by a benevolent state. Our Founders said—loudly—that rights come from God and government’s job is to secure them, not invent them. That’s the heart of the American idea. And it’s very different from how many other countries talk about rights today.

The Declaration of Independence couldn’t be clearer: we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and governments are instituted to secure those rights. Translation: rights exist before government, above government, and against government when it overreaches. The Constitution was written with that assumption baked in. That’s why the Bill of Rights reads like a set of chains on Washington—“Congress shall make no law…”—and why the Ninth Amendment reminds us that the people retain rights beyond the ones listed on parchment. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton argued about whether a bill of rights was even necessary, precisely because the federal government was supposed to be limited to the few powers we delegated to it. Limited government only makes sense if the citizen’s rights are older and higher than any statute.

Now, how does that compare to the rest of the world?

Some nations come close in language. Ireland’s constitution speaks of “inalienable… rights… antecedent and superior to all positive law.” Canada’s Charter nods to “the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” Switzerland’s preamble invokes God. Germany’s Basic Law grounds the whole order in “inviolable and inalienable human rights” and binds the state to human dignity. You can hear the echo of natural rights in those documents. They still operationalize rights through courts and charters, but the premise—there is something higher than the state—is at least acknowledged.

Others take a secular natural-rights approach. France’s 1789 Declaration calls liberty and property “natural and imprescriptible.” Modern international documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights talk about “inherent dignity.” That’s not theology, but it’s still a statement that rights aren’t the playthings of politicians.

And then there’s the parliamentary model, led by the United Kingdom. The UK has proud traditions of liberty, but the operating rule is parliamentary sovereignty: Parliament can make or unmake any law. Rights are what Parliament says they are this session, tempered by politics and, more recently, by human-rights statutes that Parliament can also revise. That’s the opposite of our starting point. In America, the people are sovereign and we loan the federal government a few enumerated powers. In the UK model, the legislature is sovereign and rights live or die on its say-so.

Why does this matter? Because the philosophical starting line determines the finish line when things get hard. When you believe government grants rights, then every crisis becomes an excuse to “temporarily” adjust them. When you believe rights are God-given and pre-political, the burden flips: the state must justify every infringement against a higher standard. That’s not just wordplay. It’s the difference between “You can speak because we allow it” and “You can speak unless we can meet a strict constitutional test to stop you.” It’s the difference between “You can worship unless the minister of regulations says otherwise” and “Government must keep its hands off your conscience.”

We’re seeing the clash of these worldviews right now. Plenty of modern officials talk like rights are downstream of legislation or agency rulemaking. Sorry—that’s not the American creed. The oath they take isn’t to a stack of regulations. It’s to a Constitution designed to fence the government in on all sides so your pre-existing rights have room to breathe.

This is where conservatives and libertarians should plant the flag. School boards, city councils, state agencies, Congress—it doesn’t matter. When anyone acts like your rights are permissions, push back. Remind them that the right to speak, to worship, to defend yourself, to be secure in your home, to be free from warrantless searches, to educate your children—these are not gifts. They’re yours by birth, not by bureaucrat.

America is not perfect. No nation is. But our founding premise is unmatched: rights first, government second. Many countries nod toward that idea; some reject it outright. We should not follow them down the path where lawmakers become the source of liberty. That road always ends the same way—rights shrink when the wrong people are in power. The American path insists on the opposite: your rights don’t depend on who holds the gavel.

So let’s recover some old wisdom. Teach the Declaration like it matters. Read the Ninth and Tenth Amendments like they’re real. Elect men and women who understand that power is supposed to be hard to use. And the next time a politician suggests your rights come from government, answer with the confidence of a free citizen: No—they come from God. Government’s job is to keep its hands off.