Tim Kane broke the internet with this one…. but I doubt it was the way he intended.
Kane is arguing against one of the most basic points as defined by our founders….
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.
Preamble to the Declaration of Independence
(The emphasis on the passage is my own, being the central part of the argument of both Cruz and myself.)
Now, notice please that it does NOT say that “they are endowed by this government”. That Kane dismisses that point so easily, is disturbing.
I quoted this older post just the other day, in an exchange with Mark Tapscott of HillFaith and of Instapundit,
Here it is; Rights are a cultural construct, and meaningless outside that construct. As I said in the article linked above: Rights are not universal.
When Jefferson wrote that “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” he was not speaking a universal truth at all. The operative word in that phrase is “WE”.
Rather than talking about a universal point of view, a universal truth, if you will, he was instead talking about the point of view of WE the new American culture. With this angle, many of the long-held myths about rights tend to disappear.
Consider; if it was in fact a universal truth that all men were created equal, it wouldn’t have been such a radical idea, for the time, much less then to now. Last I checked, it is quite true that a vast majority still do not consider these as any kind of truth, universal or otherwise; they consider them to be anything BUT self-evident. Royalty still exists, as do class structures, and slavery, as well.
Again, I say…Jefferson was speaking of the point of view of OUR culture, not that of others.
The fact of the matter is that RIGHTS ARE A CULTURAL CONCEPT, and are nigh on meaningless outside that construct.
The argument Kane is making, is nothing short of an attack on our individual rights. . He’s claiming, in effect, that there is no higher power than Government… that there are no rights the government cannot infringe upon. This flies in the face of the very basis of the Constitution Kane swore to uphold.
If the judeo-christian ethic is the foundation of our ideas about individual rights what happens to those rights foundations of that philosophy is ripped away, and finally outlawed? As One reviewer to …(Russel Kirk’s 1972 book)… “American Order” puts it…
Order is organic; that which was inherited by the new American republic was the product of care, cultivation, and time. It is recklessness to quickly and radically reshape it, and still expect a just and free society. To engage the immense privilege of reconciling liberty with law we must recognize the roots of American order that have even made that task possible.
Is this dismissal a conscious effort on Kane’s part? I’m not sure I’d go quite so far. But Sarah Arnold over at TownHall does note a bias that is being uncovered….
A federal task force established by President Donald Trump has released its first findings, revealing what it describes as systemic government hostility toward Christians during former President Joe Biden’s presidency.The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, chaired by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, outlined in its preliminary report a pattern of federal agencies targeting people of faith, especially Christians, through regulatory overreach, selective enforcement, and outright discrimination. The report is based on investigations and case studies collected over the past several months.
Among the most glaring examples are the Department of Defense and other agencies’ routine denials of religious exemptions to Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, despite constitutional protections and federal law allowing such requests. These denials continued until the U.S. Supreme Court halted the mandate following a legal challenge from The Daily Wire.
So as regards Kane, at the very least what we are looking at here is a bias toward, not the supremacy of individual rights, as laid out within the Judeo- Christian ethic, which is turn is the basis of Western culture, (and dare I say it, but also our constitution…) but the Supremacy of GOVERNMENT, over the individual, and the constitutional limits on government be damned.
Think about this… every great culture in world history has had one religion or another as it’s philosophical center. Now, think on THIS:
1: Who invented the concept of government?
2: What purpose would that entity have had in such creation?
One way we can answer those two questions at once, would be to look at what existed as the most powerful force before government was invented, and therefore what was the most likely inventor of government: CULTURE.
If we make the logical assumption that governments were originally created by the individual cultures, then it follows that each culture constructed their respective governments in their own image… governments that best reflected and advanced each culture’s interests.
The original purpose of government, therefore, is to protect, nurture and defend, and if possible expand the influence of, the culture that gave it life. As such, to the greatest of degrees possible, each government’s laws, on the whole, were the culture, codified. It follows, then, that any government holding to the original purpose of government will perform this task.
If we Americans turn our back on the cultural value on which our government is founded, what happens to the individual rights which are rooted in that cultural value? I’ve said it often enough… nature abhors a vacuum. Continuing to deny and reject the culture and the values that this nation was founded upon… the continuing moving toward a completely secular society… Our nation… Our culture… not going to be strong enough to defend itself when the time comes, and I am sure you have seen yourself the evidence that that time if not already upon us is it least very near and the threat very grave.
Absent the effort to allow the culture back into the role and value set… The perceptions of morality, of right and of wrong, that it had at the founding of this country, we are not going to save it.
