“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.”

Do you believe those famous words from the Declaration of Independence? Do you? It’s an important question because in the end so much of our debate about government really does come down to the question over whether our rights are endowed to us by God and government simply acknowledges those rights or whether government actively creates and grants rights.

I believe in the former view. In fact, I think it’s dangerous to accept that government has the ability to create rights because then they also have the ability to take rights away.

That’s why this comment by Harry Reid yesterday during the Obamacare vote is so disturbing. In comparing Democrats to Republicans he says:

“This is the difference between giving people rights and taking them away.”

It wasn’t a slip of the tongue either. Here Reid said essentially the same thing:

Make no mistake President Obama has left out “endowed by our Creator” when quoting the declaration numerous times. I don’t believe it’s by accident.

That’s why it shouldn’t be surprising that Obama fails to speak up for human rights time and again. Just last month when asked about China’s poor human rights record
Obama replied, according to DNA that “China has a different political system than we do”; that “China is at a different stage of development than we are”; and that “there has been an evolution in China over the last 30 years” and “my expectation is that 30 years from now we will have seen further evolution and further change.”

A different political system? An evolution? A different stage of development?

That relativistic claptrap is the ideology that makes oppression possible.

JE Dyer wrote a piece at Patheos saying that we’re replacing God with government.

When we chase God out of the public sphere we’re just left with Harry Reid and Barack Obama deciding what our rights are. And that’s a scary thought.