Sen Tim Cin (D-VA.) Warned American people this week that a Trump nominee for the position of a state department was an extremist, who was cut with clothes similar to Iranian Mulla and religious extremists.
Riles Barns, nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, in his initial statement revealed his dangerous announcements to Kin when he said “all men are equal because our rights come from our creator; not our laws; not from our governments.”
It was a line that should be familiar with any citizen – actually exploded by the declaration of freedom, our founding document which is going to celebrate its 250th anniversary.
Still Kaine offered a very surprising response Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
“The notion that rights do not come from laws and do not come from the government, but come from the manufacturer – that is what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It is a democratic rule that makes its rules the basis on the SIC law and targets Sunnis, Bahiyas, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities. They do this because they believe that they believe that they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their manufacturer. Therefore, our rights do not come from our laws or our governments.”
The idea that the law is the basis of “the government” called “legal positivity”, which believes that the validity and rights of laws are not based on God or natural law, but are the decisions of laws and courts.
In my upcoming book that celebrates 250th anniversary,Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American RevolutionI explain in detail how the declaration of freedom (and overall our nation) was established by a deep trust in the natural laws coming from our producer, not from the government.
The scene is captured in the declaration that stated, “We catch these truths to be self-confident, that all men are made equal, that they are endowed with some inconsistent rights by their manufacturer, that of these is the discovery of life, freedom and happiness.”
Cin represents Virginia, the state that has played such an important role in those very principles that it now joins with religious fundamentalists and terrorists.
In fact, Cin’s approach was present in the founder – and it was rejected. Alexander Hamilton wrote that “the sacred rights of mankind should not be done between old parchments or mastic records. They can be erased or obscured by a sunbeam, in full amount of human nature, in the hands of divinity, and anytime of mortal power.”
Although Frammers were clear, Cin seemed disappointingly confused. He later insisted that “I am a strong believer in natural rights, but I think if we were arguing about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with various religious traditions, there would be some important differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”
The country was established on the core, shared principles of natural law, including deep commitment to personal rights against the government. The government was not a source, but a crisis of personal rights.
In Preexisting Rights, this belief was based on such enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke, who even believed that, even when no society was present, the law was still, “There is a law of nature in the state of nature, which controls it, which binds it, which binds every one,” he wrote. “And the reason, which is the law, teaches all mankind.”
Note that a natural law can also be based on the approach to the underlying rights of humans – a approach to those rights that are necessary to be completely human. Like divinely employed rights, these are rights (such as free speeches) that belong to all humans, whether a given government or whether it is.
The danger of legal positivity is what the government understands, the government can take away. If they are only the products of assemblies and courts, our prized rights are completely separated.
This also means that constitutional security or even constitutional system rejects itself, such as fashion trichorn hats. As discussed in the book, a new generation of Jacobins is moving to the American left, challenging our constitutional traditions. Comments is Jennifer Szalai Condemned it He called the “Constitution Puja” and argued that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution can save us. A growing chorus is now surprised whether we need to save it.”
The chorus contains installation figures like Irwin Camerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law School and “No Democracy Last Forever: How the Constitution threatened the United States.”
Other law professors, such as Harvard’s Ryan D. Samuel Mion of Doorfler and Yale, Is called For the nation, “Receive America from constitutionalism.”
This “reclaimation” is easy if our rights are not in natural law, but in the developed priorities of MPs like Cin. Security does not then become manifestations of human rights, but the rights invented by humans.
Cin’s idea-that the natural law advocates are no different from the mullahs who implemented Sharia law-only are ill, but are constitutionally considered by the founders as Ish condemnation.
That is a matter of regret, an incarnation of a new crisis of faith in the foundation of our Republic on the eve of its 250th anniversary. This is a crisis of belief not only in our constitution, but also in each other, “with some infallible rights by their creator.”
Jonathan Turley George is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the University of Washington and is one of the best selling author, which discovers the Foundation and Future “Rage and the Republic: The Unique Story of the American Revolution” American democracy.
