At a hearing on September 3, radical leftist Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) asserted: "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." He continued: "It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá'ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities."

Kaine, who ran as the candidate for Vice President on the Hillary Clinton ticket in 2016, then reemphasized his point: 

"So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling," he said.

Senator Kaine's radical opinion stands in direct opposition to the very document that justified our nation's break from the British Empire. 

Written by the man who would become our second President, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence reads:

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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

Senator Ted Cruz recalled hearing Kaine make his statement disagreeing with Jefferson when he walked into the hearing.

"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.

Pointing to the Declaration, Cruz emphasized that fundamental, unalienable rights are given "not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God...."

Authoritarian Socialism vs. Unalienable Rights

It would be easy to give Kaine a pass and believe he was merely speaking out of ignorance, but history -- along with Kaine's own professional and educational background -- suggests that he may have been earnest in his insistence that rights come from government. 

Throughout history, but especially in the modern world, leftists, being socialists, have long sought to force their vision of "equity" -- the redistribution of wealth -- upon society, wherever they take power. 

That can only be done if the right to own property is violated or overturned, something authoritarian socialists attempt everywhere they take power. 

But the right to own property without violation from government follows directly from the classical liberal understanding of the origin of rights, as summarized in the Declaration by Jefferson.

If the right to life itself comes from God, then it follows that the right to own the means of sustaining life are also from God and inviolate. 

Individuals who violate the right to another person's life are guilty of a crime: murder. Those who violate the right to own the means of sustaining life are also guilty of a crime: theft. Our laws correctly prohibit these crimes and seek to ensure justice for those who are victimized by them. 

By denying that rights like these come from God, and instead are granted by government, what Kaine and other leftist socialists are insisting is that government, likewise, has the right to deny those rights to individuals. 

This is exactly the point for socialists who seek to give themselves the power to redistribute wealth and property if or when they are able to consolidate power by taking over a government. And this is no mere theoretical conjecture, since authoritarian socialists have done this repeatedly throughout history.

As Ludwig von Mises, the great economist and champion of liberty, explained in his book Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition (pp.67-68):

"Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state. It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted."