Senator Ricketts’ Weekly Column: Shutting Down The Far-Left’s Hate

March 8, 2024

American ways of life and values are under attack.

President Biden has sent swarms of bureaucrats to harass Americans at every turn. His Department of Justice labelled parents potential domestic terrorists for speaking up for their children. His Environmental Protection Agency tried to expand its power by regulating roadside ditches and farm ponds as “navigable waters.” His Department of Energy attacked gas stoves. He’s pushed unworkable and expensive electric vehicle mandates. His reckless spending created historic inflation. It’s costing a typical family $11,400 more a year to maintain their quality of life. His foreign policy of appeasement has emboldened our adversaries and made Americans less safe.

We’re also seeing attacks on American values and ideals that make our country great. They’re not just coming from the Biden administration, but the media as well. Last week, Politico’s National Investigative Correspondent was a guest on MSNBC. She attacked Christians who are close to Donald Trump, calling them “Christian Nationalists.” Her supposed proof was their belief in the founding idea of America.

Here’s what she said: “The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists—not Christians by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different—is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority, they don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court; they come from God.”

According to this reporter, those who recognize that our rights come from God instead of government are radical “Christian Nationalists.” That is a truly stunning smear of the majority of our country, past and present. It’s ignorant. It’s bigoted. It’s simply un-American. It’s also wrong.

The idea that our rights come from God is an American idea. It doesn’t belong to a specific religion or Party. It’s in our Declaration of Independence! “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.”

Our rights come to us from God, not a king or President. They’re endowments from God, not concessions from government. Government exists to secure those rights, not provide them. Abraham Lincoln called this idea the “philosophical cause” of our country. It informed George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s support for religious freedom. It inspired Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s powerful appeals for racial equality. 

We all have a responsibility to fight back against rhetoric that tries to erase history and attack the core of what America is. Attacks on our ways of life and our values cannot go unchallenged. I’m committed to fighting these attacks every day as your Senator.

My team and I are here to serve you. Contact us anytime by phone at 202-224-4224 or on my website at www.ricketts.senate.gov/contact.