On MSNBC recently, a Politico reporter named Heidi Przybyla, talking about "Christian Nationalists" said:
The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists... not Christians because Christian nationalists are very different... is that they believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any Earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God. The problem with that is that they are determining... men... are determining what God is telling them.
Now, of course, Heidi is entitled to her own opinions, but as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan(D-NY) correctly pointed out, she is not entitled to her own facts, and the plain fact of the matter is that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone document of our polity. Without it, we Americans would not have a "founding philosophy", and America's founding philosophy is this:
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...
That is: our rights are ours from birth not by a grant from any earthly government, and that, in fact, government's sole purpose in life is to make sure those rights are 'secure'. "But... from God?" you ask. "What if I don't believe in God?" Then your rights come to you from Nature or whichever metaphysical entity least offends your tender sensibilities... but they don't come from government. Government is, by its language, presumed to come into existence after you have those rights. It cannot, therefore, be the source of those rights.
I continue to hold the unshakeable belief that anyone who takes serious objection to the Declaration of Independence should not... in fact, cannot... call themselves "an American".
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