Senator Timothy “Tim” Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, is calling “extremely troubling” the assertion that rights come from “the Creator.” His rejection of the Declaration of Independence’s central theme is a chance to reflect on its revolutionary impact, and to refute the notion that government is the grantor of liberties.

On Thursday, President Trump’s nominee to be assistant secretary at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Riley Barnes, quoted Secretary Marco Rubio. “We are a nation,” Mr. Barnes said, “founded on a powerful principle … that all men are created equal.”

Mr. Barnes said that “our rights come from God our Creator — not from our laws, not from our governments.” This demonstrated an understanding of the warning that President Adams’s wife, Abigail, gave as the new nation’s laws were being drafted. “All men,” she wrote, “would be tyrants if they could.” 

The Declaration’s Enlightenment ideals, Mr. Barnes said, is why the bureau he seeks to join “is important.” He described America as “a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth that our Founders understood as essential to American self-government.” 

Mr. Kaine took exception, as the “tyrant” the Declaration was addressed to, King George III, did in 1776. The way of the world before President Jefferson put quill to parchment — signed by 56 patriots pledging “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” — had been for the powerful to bestow or cancel the liberties of their subjects.

“A prince,” Jefferson wrote, “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Human beings have “certain inalienable rights, endowed by their Creator,” meaning beyond any government’s power to remove. All of this was once basic civics. Yet it struck Mr. Kaine as radical — which indeed it was, 250 years ago next July 4. 

“The notion,” Mr. Kaine said, “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.” He listed as proof oppression by that “theocratic regime” on “various religious minorities.” 

In this, Mr. Kaine forgot the First Amendment to the Constitution, which recognizes the right of religious freedom. Iran, he said, also believes “natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”   

Mr. Kaine said that while he’s a “strong believer in natural rights,” if what they are was debated by people in the committee room with different viewpoints and religious beliefs, “some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights” would result.

Yet those rights — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” among them — were agreed upon at the founding and the nation has respected them ever since. During the heated debate over ratifying the Constitution, the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added for clarity and to win support from those who feared a monarchy.

The notion that certain basic liberties come from God — code written into our software that no update can alter — is no longer “self-evident” for many Americans. Government, they believe, is the wellspring of rights, the supreme authority citizens appeal to for new freedoms or to curtail those enjoyed by others. 

After his speech, Mr. Kaine left the hearing. He might have benefited, though, from hearing the response by a Texas Republican, Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz. “Senator Kaine,” he said, found it “radical and dangerous” that Mr. Barnes would say “our rights came from God and not from government.” 

Mr. Cruz cited “the most prominent Virginian to ever serve, Thomas Jefferson,” and the Declaration. Rights are not, he said, bestowed “by government” or “the Democratic National Committee, but by God.” New presidents or congressional majorities, by design, cannot cancel existing rights or bestow new ones. The Declaration and Constitution are bulwarks against that erosion.

Only tyrants, or men who would be, need find troubling their recognition of rights endowed by a higher power. “The natural progress of things,” Jefferson warned, “is for liberty to yield — and government to gain — ground.”