On Monday, MS NOW host Katy Tur moderated a panel in which she discussed recent, supposedly controversial comments by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-LA.

"What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government, they come from You, our Creator and Heavenly Father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?" she asked incredulously.

I'm just going to pause here and quote from this obscure line in the Declaration of Independence. And by obscure, I mean one of the most famous lines in the English language.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal..." maybe Tur never got past that part, "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

So, the concept that God is "above" the Declaration of Independence is... in the Declaration of Independence. God's law supersedes man's law. Governments that deprive citizens of rights endowed by their creator without due process are bad governments and are possibly illegitimate. That's the whole point of the thing, right?

One of Tur's guests, Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, actually managed to answer her question with a straight face but with an acknowledgement that her audience may remarkably not be familiar with the concept of God-given rights.

"You know, I think that idea is not wholly uncommon, the idea that we sort of have unalienable rights that come from God can be read in a fairly benign way," Coppins responded. "Which is basically that we have innate human rights, that our constitution and our government, our democratic government, are meant to codify. Right. That idea is not totally abnormal."

You don't say.

Somehow this isn't even the first time an MS NOW host or guest has expressed shock at the concept of rights being endowed by a creator.

In 2024, the now former Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla went on the network and said that the only people who believe in "God-given rights" that don't come from the government are "Christian Nationalists," whom she distinguished from other "Christians."

At least Przybyla later sort of apologized for these remarks, calling them "clumsy."

Saying that rights come from our Creator should be one of the most noncontroversial statements an American could make, a concept universally understood by anyone with a basic understanding of our history.

Unfortunately, it's not as universal as it once was.

Johnson weighed in on Tur's comments, saying in an interview with Townhall Editor Larry O'Connor that it was "stunning" she didn't know the concept of God-given rights was in the declaration.

The speaker of the House said that it was incredible that "someone who is in the mainstream media, on TV every night espousing her views ... does not understand the birth document of the country."

It is stunning, but it is not surprising in my mind.

There is now a significant bubble of America's college-educated elites who've somehow spent decades speaking in the public arena who've never come across an idea that was once wholly elementary.

They've absorbed completely the idea that rights surely come from government to the point that they don't even know how wildly out of step that notion is with the entire American political project.

It's not hard to see why there is such a wide philosophical chasm in this country, why politics now seem so existential.

Click Here and scroll down to view the videos from MS NOW

We aren't just battling over a few strongly held ideas. At this point, we aren't even speaking the same political language.

Of course, the concept of God-given rights was essential to the Founders' justification for the American Revolution. The Framers designed our government not so that it would give rights, but so that it could protect them as best as could be done in the imperfect world we live in.

Members of our most prestigious media institutions apparently don't even know that their constitutionally protected right to free speech comes from the idea that it is inalienable, endowed by our Creator.

But if the standard for free speech is simply a matter of who has the most governmental or institutional power then I find it doubtful that anyone will have freedom of any kind at the end of our country's next 250 years of existence, or that we'll even have a country.

The folks at MS NOW don't seem to grasp this, and it's not looking promising that they ever will. Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past."

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