The Senator Tim Kaine Remedial Class on Freedom and Human Dignity

The Senator compares those who believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence to the Iranian regime. Not only is it a horrible insult, but it is the sign of willful ignorance,

By Mark Strand

Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) apparently needs a remedial course in the founding of the American Republic and the structure of the Bill of Rights. He actually said in a hearing before the Senate:

”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. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

What a profound misunderstanding of the source of our rights. Last year, I wrote a post about human freedom and dignity, and the source of our rights. For anyone who needs a refresher, or is arguing with people like Senator Kaine who repudiates our Founding principles, I hope this will be helpful.

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“There can be no rule of law, however, unless citizens and especially leaders are convinced that there is no freedom without truth. In effect, “the grave problems which threaten the dignity of the human person, the family, marriage, education, the economy and working conditions, the quality of life and life itself, raise the question of the rule of law”. The Synod Fathers rightly stressed that “the fundamental rights of the human person are inscribed in human nature itself, they are willed by God and therefore call for universal observance and acceptance. No human authority can infringe upon them by appealing to majority opinion or political consensus, on the pretext of respect for pluralism and democracy.” – Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, January 22, 1999

Freedom has always been the heart of the American experiment. If America forgets what freedom is, it will lose its character and eventually fail.

One of the first projects I pursued after becoming President of the Congressional Institute was with House Republican Leader John Boehner in 2009. The Republicans had lost the House in 2006, and Boehner had risen to lead his Party. He wanted to assess the Republicans' “brand.” A brand represents how people perceive you (or your product), and Boehner believed there was a disconnect between how voters viewed the Republicans and how the party viewed itself.

The project lasted a few months and saw widespread participation from the Republican Conference. What was remarkable was that one word kept surfacing, regardless of the policy being discussed: freedom.

Freedom was at the root of everything these Republicans said they believed in. More freedom for people in their homes, businesses, and communities was at the heart of their political philosophy. While a “brand statement” was never rolled out, the message was loud and clear, and I think it was no coincidence that Boehner led the Republicans back into the majority in the 2010 elections.

The word "freedom" gets tossed around, but what does it really mean to Americans? In the 2024 elections, freedom was a theme for the pro-choice side—but what they truly meant was power, not freedom. It was the power to do whatever they chose. The issue is that this represents only half of the definition.

Genuine freedom is something more important than power or a license to do whatever one wants. Freedom means nothing if it doesn’t involve the ability to do good while respecting the rights of others. Power obtained at the expense of others is not freedom; it is its opposite.

Neither is it merely choice. Freedom is the ability to make a choice – but the choice is simply the act of deciding good or evil, happy or sad, right or wrong. Choice manifests our conscience – what we choose to do with our freedom. If one has no choice, they cannot do good or bad – it is only in making a choice that we reveal who we are.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The Berlin Wall

There was hypocrisy in American freedom for the first hundred years. The choices made by the Founders allowed evil to continue in the form of slavery. Abraham Lincoln changed how Americans lived: “he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”

According to Lincoln, the choice to deprive another of their freedom had consequences for the one making that choice.

In Lincoln’s view, freedom is a two-way street. The security of my freedom depends on the security of yours. When I exercise my freedom in a way that undermines yours, it stops being freedom and instead becomes a pursuit of power.

The ideal of freedom that inspired the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution represented an objective truth. These documents did not create freedom; rather, they acknowledged it as a birthright of humanity.

Freedom is connected to the concept of human dignity. Every person’s dignity entitles them to freedom in all its forms, and that dignity is inherent – that is to say, a fundamental aspect of nature or character of human existence. As John Paul II wrote, “Human dignity is rooted in humans being created in the image and likeness of God. This gives every human person inherent and inalienable dignity.”

This idea is also at the heart of Protestantism, which was so predominant during the Revolution. Nearly two centuries later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the same idea: that Freedom came from the human dignity that comes from God.

"You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the "image of God," is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: there are no gradations in the image of God. Every man, from a treble white to a bass black, is significant on God’s keyboard precisely because every man is made in the image of God. One day, we will learn that. We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man."

Human dignity serves as the foundation of human rights. Rights safeguard and promote the dignity of individuals. Genuine freedom is an objective right to which all people are entitled. Thus, the purpose of a legitimate government is to safeguard the rights and freedoms inherent in each individual's dignity.

Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of the Free Press, said in a speech on essential rights, “What are those values? They include the rule of the law. The belief in the inalienable rights of each individual. That we are all created in the image of God, and it is that—and not our ethnicity or our IQ score—that gives us our worth and that makes us all equal.”

It turns out that freedom, instead of merely being a license to do whatever we want, is something more selfless. Freedom is achievable when each person recognizes the dignity of others as well as their own.

This form of genuine freedom serves as the foundation of the rule of law. Equal justice under the law acknowledges the inherent rights and dignity of every individual, regardless of wealth, race, color, or religious beliefs.

Freedom enables us to coexist within a community. A community demands mutual respect and limits on our actions that may infringe on others' rights.

In this way, freedom includes restraint. Is that a contradiction? Not really. Living in a community with others requires mutual restraint out of respect for everyone’s freedom and rights. However, this isn’t merely unselfishness on my part because I have the right to expect that my neighbor respects my rights. Therefore, freedom includes a mutual recognition of each other’s inherent dignity

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It is fortunate that freedom is inherent to our being, as achieving it in practice is quite challenging. Being selfish and self-interested, human nature views life as a competition for power. Throughout much of human history, the powerful have ruled over the weak. “Might makes right,” the old monarchs and rulers of the world believed, and since the inherent dignity of each person was not guaranteed, this belief became the standard by which injustice and oppression were measured.

This made the American experiment even more unique. We intentionally established a system to protect the rights and freedoms of all citizens based on the belief that they already possessed these rights and that the government's role was to defend them. As history shows, not everyone benefited from that early government. One of the great insights of the Constitution was recognizing that, at the time of its drafting, significantly more was needed to ensure the inherent dignity of all our people.

As evidence of the unselfish nature of freedom were the words of Col. Joshua Chamberlain to the troops under his command at Gettysburg:

“This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or – or just because they like killing. But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free.

America should be free ground – all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free – all the way, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home.

But it’s not the land. There’s always more land.

It’s the idea that we all have value – you and me.

What we’re fighting for, in the end, we’re fighting for each other.”

Forgetting the essence of freedom poses a danger. When people cease to believe in God, they also begin to lose their belief in freedom. Without God, inherent dignity vanishes; it becomes merely a comforting idea without a solid foundation in justice. While a society can survive for some time without this belief—largely out of habit—the rights associated with freedom begin to erode as humanity falls back into the dominance of the powerful over the weak.

Joshua Chamberlin, hero of Gettysburg

The United Kingdom serves as a significant example. Freedom of speech is under siege. In some places, it is considered a crime to pray quietly if the focus of that prayer contradicts the government's desires. It seems absurd, doesn’t it? But why shouldn’t it be? If a government aims to enforce specific behaviors, it has the military and police power necessary to do so. People will be coerced to conform. That marks the beginning of the end for freedom.

European elites became quite uncomfortable when Vice President JD Vance reminded Europe of this. Are American and European values the same? Americans refer to inalienable rights—objectively true principles. The founders of post-World War II Europe, including Alcide De Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer, and Robert Schuman, viewed Christian democracy as the solution to fascism and communism. However, today's Europe increasingly seems to depend on “values” primarily dictated by the political trends of the moment. Values can change—a proponent might argue they occasionally evolve into new values. For instance, what began as freedom of speech has transformed into freedom from certain kinds of speech (usually those political views that are currently out of fashion).

One reason the “woke” movement is so dangerous is that it employs forms of cultural, academic, and legal intimidation to compel specific speech, thoughts, and behaviors. It rejects the notion that a person can be free to disagree. It cannot even tolerate the idea of someone thinking differently than what the State would allow. Conformity to the State's desires is not freedom at all; it is one of the definitions of totalitarianism.

Author and theologian Os Guinness expressed another problem. He wrote: For at the heart of freedom lies a grand paradox: the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom.” He writes that the institutions of freedom can be maintained, but it is the “spirit of liberty and habits of the heart” that have to be continually renewed.

“Freedom requires order,” writes Guinness, “and therefore restraint, yet the only restraint that does not contradict freedom is self-restraint, which is the very thing freedom undermines when it flourishes.”

The challenges of freedom are greater in prosperous and peaceful times than in war or other difficult periods. In tough circumstances, people have clear reasons for self-restraint and sacrifice. In prosperous times, the need for restraint feels less apparent. The issue of freedom is not primarily found in the institutions that uphold it but in the character of a society's leaders and citizens. As individuals exercise their freedom for selfish purposes or personal power, they increasingly endanger the freedom of others, resulting in calls for the government to restrict that freedom. As people increasingly seek protection from the government against the actions of others, there emerges a demand for reduced freedom and increased state authority. The regulation by the state takes the place of personal virtue.

As I wrote earlier, freedom means nothing if it does not mean the ability to do good things while respecting the rights of others. Pope John Paul II may have said it best:

“Freedom is often misunderstood as the ability to do whatever one desires. However, true freedom consists not in doing what we like but in having the right to do what we ought.

…Freedom is ordered to the truth and is fulfilled in man's quest for truth and in man's living in the truth. Detached from this truth, freedom deteriorates into license in the lives of individuals and becomes the caprice of the most powerful in political life.”

John Paul II

Therefore, the survival of freedom is not just a set of ethical principles but the capacity of free individuals to wield their freedom for the benefit of all and to choose self-restraint over the urge to dominate others. At the core of freedom lies respect for the dignity of others and a commitment to advance their well-being. Rather than merely serving as a tool for personal power, freedom is fundamentally unselfish, acknowledging that one’s own freedom depends on the freedom of everyone else as well.

This illustrates another paradox: How do free people manage to innovate, create, and empower others with their freedom? Often, these individuals accumulate significant wealth. However, it appears that freedom rewards those who serve others. While capitalism is morally neutral, when individuals apply the Golden Rule within a free market, they achieve success. They succeed because their inventions or services benefit others. Do good to others as you would have them do good to you.

However, this is not solely confined to economics. The volunteer at the soup kitchen, the police officer safeguarding the community, the nun tending to lepers and those cast aside by society, the teacher equipping students with the intellectual tools of freedom, the soldier confronting an enemy, the researcher striving to cure cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, the mother assisting her children with their homework, and the father who takes on an extra job to provide for his family are all individuals using their freedom for good.

Therefore, one of the best measures of freedom, whether for an individual or a nation, is how effectively that freedom is used to improve the lives of others. It almost always demands sacrificial effort, but such sacrifice is often rewarded with a more fulfilling life and the love of those who are grateful.

As Ronald Reagan said: "Our founding documents proclaim to the world that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few. It is the universal right of all God's children."

But then he also cautioned:

"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance. It must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again."

Today, freedom must be preserved and protected. True freedom is not always aligned with human nature, which often leans more toward self-interest than respecting the rights and dignity of others. Yet, human history is full of examples demonstrating the disasters that arise when people fail to acknowledge and respect the freedom and dignity of others. Freedom offers the choice to do good or to do harm. The future of freedom relies on our choices as individuals and what we demand from the governments we elect.