Former Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla repeated a claim Friday evening that should disturb all freedom-loving Americans — that our fundamental rights are granted by government rather than a higher authority.
A simple reading of the Declaration of Independence would prove her wrong — again.
"The one thing that unites all [Trump supporters] as Christian nationalists — not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalists is very different — is that they believe that our rights as Americans — as all human beings — don’t come from any Earthly authority," she said on an MSNBC panel.
Przybyla went on to explain that "Christian nationalists" believe that our rights "don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court — they come from God."
She made precisely the same claim during a February MSNBC appearance — this time tying it to President-elect Donald Trump.
"Remember when Trump ran in 2016, a lot of the mainline Evangelicals wanted nothing to do with the divorced real estate mogul who had cheated on his wife with a porn star and all of that, right?" Przybyla asked.
"So what happened was he was surrounded by this more extremist element."
Enter the boogeyman she calls "Christian nationalism."
"You're going hear words like 'Christian nationalism,' like the 'New Apostolic Reformation,'" she continued. "These are groups that you should get very, very schooled on because they have a lot of power in Trump's circle."
And what distinguishes Christian nationalists from regular Christians? The source of our most basic, fundamental rights.
Przybyla said that what unites all Christian nationalists "is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don't come from any earthly authority.
"They don't come from Congress, they don't come from the Supreme Court, they come from God."
The Declaration of Independence refers to God not less than four times, and one passage is especially right on point:
"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."
She even referred to this same sentence from the Declaration of Independence in a Feb. 29 Politico column, but then discounted its relevance.
The term "God-given rights" reflects the Judeo-Christian values of the Founders. If it embarrasses or offends Przybyla for any reason, she should feel free to substitute it with "natural rights" or "human rights."
The principle of natural rights goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who believed that every human possessed fundamental natural rights — even if they were not recognized by government.
Przybyla also argued during her February MSNBC appearance that "the problem with” the belief that fundamental rights are God-given is that “men are determining what God is telling them."
Fair enough, but these are rights that are so fundamental that everyone can agree on them.
The point is, that if fundamental rights were granted by an "earthly authority" such as Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court (as she suggests), then that same "earthly authority" would have the power to revoke them at its whim whenever it wants.
Inalienable, fundamental, natural, God-given rights are incapable of being revoked, and are what distinguish a free and open society from an oppressive one.
The fact that America’s Founders recognized that our rights came from God is what makes America exceptional and should be celebrated — not denied.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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