Where do your rights come from?
Speaker Mike Johnson has a whiteboard lesson he has given to college students for years. It takes six words. Recorded during a tour of the United States Capitol Rotunda.
1. The old order: the divine right of kings
Nearly every great nation before ours ran on some form of this. The earthly king was sovereign. He decided what you could own, what rights you had, sometimes even who you could marry. Rights flowed down from the king.
2. 1776: they erased the king
The Declaration cut out the middleman. Rights come from the Creator straight to the person — which means no government can take away what it never gave.
3. Created equal. Not born equal.
“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 is the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s rough draft called those truths “sacred and undeniable.”
Created. Endowed. Someone gave them to you.
4. Why it matters: your worth isn’t issued to you
If every person is made in God’s image, then every person carries the same inherent dignity. Not based on the color of your skin. Not your zip code. Not your talents or where you went to school.
Value that a government never granted is value a government cannot revoke.
5. Now erase God: what’s left is just the people
With no Creator, there is no one to give you rights. They come from government instead — and what government grants, government can take back. Johnson calls this the starting premise of Marxism, socialism and communism.
6. 1962: “In God We Trust”
Congress voted to carve the national motto into the marble directly above the Speaker’s chair in the House chamber. The visitor guide to the House explains why: it was placed there as a rebuke to Soviet philosophy during the Cold War. It is still the first thing you see when you walk onto the floor.
7. Pass it on
Freedom isn’t inherited in the bloodstream. Johnson, echoing Reagan: it is not automatic and it is not passed down by birth. Every generation has to understand it, defend it, and hand it to the one behind them — or lose it.
Drawn from Speaker Mike Johnson’s remarks during a tour of the United States Capitol Rotunda, ahead of America’s 250th. Free to share.
🔗 Read and share — interactive version (adjustable text size, dark mode)