Where do your rights come from?

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.

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.

The wording was deliberate

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…

Declaration of Independence, second paragraph. Jefferson's rough draft called those truths “sacred & undeniable.”

Created. Endowed. Someone gave them to you.

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.

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.

1962 · The House Chamber

IN GOD WE TRUST

Congress voted to carve the national motto into the marble directly above the Speaker's chair. 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.

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.