Although the Trump Administration has been focused diligently on shrinking the size of the federal government, news this week of the rare creation of a new office is hopeful and encouraging.  The new office will be based in the State Department and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stated the “Office of Natural Rights” was created “in order to reclaim America’s founding principles against globalist ‘rights.'”

Global, Leftist elites have always misunderstood or ignored the most important tenet of American government: our fundamental rights don’t come from government, they come from God.  In connection with this principle, it is critically important to remember that whatever rights the government arbitrarily gives, it may also arbitrarily take away.  That is why our Founding Fathers and the Framers of our Constitution made very certain that our fundamental rights are grounded solidly and irrevocably in natural law.

Thomas Jefferson couldn’t even complete his first sentence in the Declaration of Independence without affirming that this new American country and its citizens would take the places to which they were entitled by and through the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”  Jefferson’s very next sentence was one that is as memorable as it is eternal: “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 among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

If Jefferson had stopped writing at this point, he would have adequately defined the purpose and aspiration of the new nation.  He had made clear that our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—and all they entail—did not derive from an act of earthly government.  They were endowed to us and instilled in us by our Creator.

In fact, Jefferson underscores this point by stating that the only legitimate government was one that exercises its powers with the “consent of the governed.”  That is why no earthly government may legitimately deprive us of them.  On the contrary, we may “alter or abolish” with force any attempt to do so and then put in place a new government that ensures our safety and happiness.   The Declaration concludes with the signers pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor (and many of them paid dearly) to uphold this principle of natural, God-given rights of which we simply cannot be divested.  And they called upon the protection and reliance of Divine Providence to do so.

So, for the U.S. State Department to highlight and project worldwide the fundamental nature and sacrosanct importance of natural rights is critical, both as a reminder to our own American government and as an example to the world.

I also think the speech of Vice President, J.D. Vance, in Munich, Germany in February of this year contributed to the creation of this new office.

One of the main things VP Vance emphasized in his speech regarding our “shared values” with European countries was the infringement by some European governments of those very values.  These include freedom of speech, expression, religion, conscience, association, and autonomy all being indispensable underpinnings of our inalienable, God-given right to liberty.  VP Vance highlighted several stark abuses of these rights by European nations.

These included everything from digital and other censorship when government officials arbitrarily deem communication “hate speech,” to “European courts canceling elections or the backsliding in the UK away from conscience rights placing the basic liberties of religious Britons in the crosshairs, when the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone—just silently praying on his own on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before; Or, the Scottish government threatening citizens whose houses lay within so-called “safe access zones” to abortion clinics warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.

This is chilling and insane.

VP Vance asserted that when other nations, who claim to hold mutual “shared values” with the United States, act in this way they have nothing in common with us and we are going to challenge those derelictions.

The fact that an office in the State Department has put the imprimatur of the U.S. federal government on such an endeavor is very important and powerfully symbolic.