That clash Wednesday between Senators Timothy Kaine and Ted Cruz certainly puts the hay down where us mules can get to it. It was at a hearing in the Senate for the nominee to the State Department’s bureau of democracy, human rights, and labor. The poor fellow offered the suggestion that “our rights come from God our Creator — not from our laws, not from our governments.” The dainty Democrats present almost fell out of their senatorial socks.

Aaaaiiiiyup, it turns out that the idea of God having a role in endowing humans with anything other than Marxism-Leninism has become a detested dogma for the modern Democratic Party. Nevermind that it was Thomas Jefferson — patron saint of the party — who wrote the Declaration of Independence in which is given the phrasing about all men being “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

No, the hapless nominee had barely spoken when Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of the Old Dominion, came down on him like a ton of brickbats. The Democrats’ one-time nominee to be vice president called any suggestion that our rights come from God to be “extremely troubling.” The nominee, Riley Barnes, quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “Our rights come from God our creator — not from our laws, not from our governments.”

Mr. Kaine took exception to this “notion,” as he put it, “that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the Creator.” The solon suggested “that’s what the Iranian government believes.” Under the ayatollahs, he added, the theocracy at Tehran purports that “natural rights are from their Creator.” Quoth Mr. Kaine: “The statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

One might wonder what the denizens of Soviet Russia or Communist China, not to mention the Islamic Republic of Iran, would make of Mr. Kaine’s logic on this head. The constitution of the regime at Beijing, after all, teems with guaranteed rights. “The state shall respect and protect human rights,” it asserts. Xi Jinping’s subjects are promised, too, “freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.” 

The version of the Soviet parchment proclaimed in 1977, too, assured that “Citizens of the USSR enjoy in full the social, economic, political and personal rights and freedoms proclaimed and guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR and by Soviet laws.” What makes these charters — including Iran’s — mere scraps of paper, though, is their lack of “negative rights,” or limits on the power of the state.

The essential point the Declaration makes clear is that the rights of men come from a higher authority. The Framers understood it can only be that way. That is why the most emphatic statement in the entire parchment is the prohibition of religious tests. It says that all legislators of the national and state legislatures shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution — and then the immortal caveat:

“But,” it says, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” There it is. “No … ever … any.” 

What the Constitution does is limit the government’s power to abridge those rights. So the Marxists and other tyrants, when they look at rights pledged by a government, are looking at governance through the wrong end of the telescope. The Democrats would be wiser to spurn the oxymoron of Godless liberty and look to the promise of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution for the formulation of freedom.