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Senator's Comments During Hearing Draw Strong Response
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Senator's Comments During Hearing Draw Strong Response

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week, a clash over America’s founding principles turned unusually sharp when Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) suggested that language drawn directly from the Declaration of Independence sounded uncomfortably similar to the rhetoric of the Iranian regime.

The exchange came as senators considered President Trump’s nominee Riley Barnes for assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. In his opening statement, Barnes echoed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, affirming a cornerstone of American philosophy: “We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator — not from our laws, not from our governments.”


Barnes argued that this conviction was “a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government,” and a guiding principle for the bureau he had been nominated to lead.

But Kaine bristled at the phrasing. “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,” Kaine said. He described Iran as a theocracy that claims divine authority for its power while persecuting Sunnis, Jews, Christians, and Bahá’ís. For Kaine, grounding rights in God raised troubling questions about who defines those rights when people disagree.


His remarks immediately sparked pushback. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) noted that Barnes’ statement was not some radical reinterpretation but a restatement of Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator…’” Cruz recited. “Not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God.”

The debate quickly spilled beyond the committee room. Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota blasted Kaine on social media, warning that if rights are seen as gifts of government, they can just as easily be revoked. “If the government creates our rights, it can take them away,” Barron wrote. “It just strikes me as extraordinary that a major American politician wouldn’t understand this really elemental part of our system.”

Written by Arthur Higgens - September 5, 2025