00:04:48.820This was a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week.
00:04:52.120And it was a confirmation hearing for a number of nominees.
00:04:54.940And the way hearings work in the Senate is often you have multiple hearings simultaneously.
00:05:00.760And so that day I had a Senate Foreign Relations hearing.
00:05:04.240I had a Commerce Committee hearing that I was chairing and conducting.
00:05:07.380And then I also had a Judiciary Committee hearing.
00:05:09.020And so you have to go from hearing to hearing.
00:05:10.620So you're walking in and out of each of the hearings trying to make it to all of them.
00:05:15.820And so I was just walking into the Foreign Relations Committee hearing, and Tim Kaine happened to be questioning and speaking.
00:05:23.740And I was getting ready to speak myself, so I sat down.
00:05:26.640And one of the Trump administration nominees to the State Department had included in his testimony the observation that our rights come from God and not from government.
00:05:56.300The 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.
00:06:05.740It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Baha'is, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities.
00:06:17.060And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their creator.
00:06:22.160So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.
00:06:30.720I think the motto over the Supreme Court is equal justice under law.
00:06:34.680The oath that you and I take pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not arbitrarily defined natural rights.
00:06:42.960Mr. Barnes, I'd actually like to go back to the exchange you had with Senator Kaine, and I wish Senator Kaine was still here.
00:06:52.260Senator Kaine and I were elected together 13 years ago.
00:06:57.560I would actually encourage observers to go back and listen to what Senator Kaine said.
00:07:01.780Because I have to say it, I think, was disturbing and showed much of where today's Democrat Party has gone wrong.
00:07:12.700So Senator Kaine said in this hearing that he found it a radical and dangerous notion that you would say our rights came from God and not from government.
00:07:24.240I just walked into the hearing as he was saying that I almost fell out of my chair because that radical and dangerous notion, in his words, is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created.
00:07:40.020And if you do not believe me, and you made reference to this, Mr. Barnes, then you can believe perhaps the most prominent Virginian to ever serve, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence,
00:07:56.540we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator.
00:08:06.960Not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:08:16.960I have to say it is stunning to me that the principle that God has given us natural rights is now deemed by Democrats some radical and dangerous notion.
00:08:29.700Mr. Jefferson was right when he wrote those words.
00:08:33.640Government exists to protect those rights, but slavery was not okay when U.S. law allowed it.
00:08:41.720It was wrong then, it is wrong now, it is always wrong.
00:09:25.540And what troubled me about this, I actually had an entirely different line of questioning that I was planning to get into at the hearing.
00:09:32.260And I just walked in and heard him saying this.
00:09:34.660And what troubled me was just how casually, how casually he said, look, the basic ideas that were the foundation of America, those ideas are radical.
00:10:14.720In unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
00:10:27.400and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.
00:10:38.600A decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
00:10:48.600We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
00:11:00.060that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:11:04.640And then I want you to listen to the next sentence, because it really explains why Tim Kaine is fundamentally wrong in the relationship between rights that come from God and the role of government.
00:11:14.360That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
00:11:28.940That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
00:11:38.860and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
00:11:52.960Now that's the right relationship, which is that government is not the source of the rights.
00:11:59.680God is the source of the rights. It is God who has given you and me and everyone listening to this a right to life.
00:12:05.640It is God who has given us a right to liberty. It is God who has given us a right to the pursuit of happiness.
00:12:11.600Historically, and if you go back to some of the great English thinkers, people like John Locke,
00:12:17.140the three standard natural rights that people were discussed having were life, liberty, and property.
00:12:23.740And Jefferson did not include property in the Declaration because he did not want to get into the debate on slavery.
00:12:29.940And so in place of property, he put in pursuit of happiness.
00:12:33.400A pursuit of happiness in many ways is just an aspect of liberty that is part of liberty, is the pursuit of happiness.
00:12:40.740But the relationship that is important, and every one of our founding fathers knew this.
00:12:45.960Thomas Jefferson knew this. George Washington knew this. James Madison knew this. Ben Franklin knew this.
00:12:51.820They understood, look, God has given us these rights.
00:12:55.580Now, Tim is saying, well, no, no, it's government who gives us his rights.
00:13:00.460That's backwards. As the Declaration says, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.
00:13:09.020That means the purpose of government is to secure, to protect those rights.
00:13:13.180Do you need government to protect our rights? Absolutely.
00:13:15.780Absolutely. And actually, the point I made in the debate with Tim Kaine, listen, slavery was wrong.
00:13:22.240It was immoral, even for the hundred plus years that it was legal here.
00:13:27.500The fact that our laws allowed slavery didn't make it suddenly moral and just and okay.
00:13:50.960600,000 Americans died to end the scourge of slavery.
00:13:55.480And then we amended the Constitution to explicitly end slavery.
00:13:59.880But slavery was not magically okay before the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
00:14:06.560And that's a point that Tim Kaine is really representing well today's Democrat Party because the entire party rejects that.
00:14:16.280And I'll tell you why they reject that.
00:14:18.180Because if rights don't come from God, if they come from government, then government can take them away.
00:14:23.980The Declaration refers to these rights as unalienable.
00:14:27.140Unalienable means they can't be taken away.
00:14:29.200The Democrats believe your rights are entirely alienable, that the only God is government, and government can give, government can take away.
00:14:39.060That's the fundamental debate, and it's a debate right at the heart, I think, of where today's Democrat Party has gone off the rails.
00:14:45.200Yeah, final question on this, because I do believe we're also witnessing a public disdain for people of faith coming from the Democratic Party.
00:14:54.380We've seen the undertones of that, but now it just seems to be at the forefront, that it's almost like they mock and roll their eyes at people of faith.
00:15:04.220We've seen this, certainly with the debates and the conversations over people that are Jewish and people of faith in Israel.
00:15:18.200The Democrat Party position often seems to be people of faith need not apply.
00:15:23.240If you're a Christian, the Democrats don't want you.
00:15:25.840If you're Jewish, the Democrats don't want you.
00:15:28.040If you're Catholic, the Democrats don't want you.
00:15:31.600If you believe your faith, if you worship, if you are faithful and it matters to you, the Democrats have said that is not welcome.
00:15:42.640And, you know, it wasn't too long ago when there was a real bipartisan commitment to religious liberty.
00:15:49.480You know, you go back to the 1990s, 1993, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed Congress protecting the religious liberty of every American.
00:28:33.840And what's interesting is when you do research on this, Senator, one of the things that's the most shocking about it is a lot of police forces are actually running out of their Narcan, which is what you can give to try to save someone's life when they overdose.
00:28:51.480Their yearly supply, they're eating through it in two to three months into the year.
00:28:58.320And they're having to go to their city council and their board of aldermen, their county commissioners, depending on what type of government they have.
00:29:04.240And they're having to beg them for more money because they're running through the budget for what they need to save people's lives.
00:29:11.120That's how big of an epidemic this has become.
00:29:13.420And again, it's the number one killer of young people in this country.
00:29:16.520That is something that needs to be said over and over again.
00:29:21.360Well, and police officers and first responders, they often wear gloves.
00:29:26.280They're very frightened because if they inadvertently touch fentanyl, a tiny amount can kill them.
00:29:31.340The level that this is deadly is truly unprecedented.
00:29:38.100And, you know, I'll say I want to share an illustration that a DEA agent told me a number of years ago, which we were sitting and doing a roundtable with a DEA agent and with a mom who had lost her child to fentanyl poisoning.
00:29:50.900And here's what the DEA agent did is he handed out everyone sweet and low packets of the sweetener you put in your tea or coffee.
00:29:58.900And he said, OK, tear open the sweet and low packet.
00:30:01.460And he said, empty all the sweet and low onto the table.
00:30:58.460And they don't think they are risking their lives.
00:31:02.480I don't know a parent who is not terrified about the risks that their kids will make one wrong choice and it will cost them their entire life.
00:31:15.200And this is part of the reason why I think the president is also, as you wrap up this last week, going after these drug cartels and saying,
00:31:24.380we're going to use the full force of our government to go after them since we've declared them terrorist organizations because they're killing Americans.
00:31:32.840Look, obviously, the U.S. military took out a Trenderagua narco-terrorist boat off the shores of Venezuela just this past week.
00:31:44.260As you know, last week I was in Mexico meeting with senior government officials in Mexico and making clear to them, the United States is going after these cartels.
00:31:53.560And we're going to do so either with or without you.
00:31:57.040You know, listening to the story of the 171 Sinaloa cartel members arrested New England reminded me of the MS-13 cartel member that I spoke with down in El Salvador.
00:32:08.720I went to the SECOT, the Maximum Security Terrorist Prison.
00:32:12.440And if you didn't listen to our podcast last week, let me encourage every one of you to go back and listen to last week's podcast where I take you inside this prison,
00:32:21.360this maximum security prison built for 40,000 gang members, mass murderers, and terrorists.
00:32:27.320And I met with one MS-13 gang member who'd lived in Texas many years.
00:32:34.200He became an MS-13 member when he was 13 years old, living in Falls Church, Virginia.
00:32:43.680That's the level at which these gangs have penetrated our society.
00:32:49.360And by the way, the only way you become a member of MS-13 is you have to murder someone.
00:32:54.260So at age 13, he murdered someone to become a member of this gang.
00:32:59.580When I asked him why he did it, he said all of his friends were doing the same thing,
00:33:02.840that he was hanging out with other 13-year-olds who were joining the same gang.
00:33:06.860And this is now a 42-year-old man who's spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison because of the multiple murders he committed.