In April 2026, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech at the University of Texas. He said something that sounds simple but is actually one of the most important ideas in American history: your rights come from God, not from government. That idea is worth thinking hard about. Because where your rights come from changes everything about how much freedom you actually have.
Two Very Different Ideas
Picture two different countries.
Country A
Rights come from a higher power — from God, from nature, from a moral order that existed before any king or congress was ever born. The government didn't create those rights. It can't take them away. Its only job is to protect what people already have.
Country B
Rights come from the government. The government wrote them down. The government gave them out. The government decides how many you get and when.
Here's the question: which country is more free?
The answer is obvious. In Country A, no politician can vote away your freedom of speech, because your freedom of speech isn't his to take. In Country B, every right you have is only as safe as whoever is in power right now.
Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.
Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower
That word "corollary" just means: if you accept the first part, you have to accept what logically follows. If government gives rights, government can take them. You cannot have it both ways.
What the Founders Believed
The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence understood this perfectly. Thomas Jefferson didn't say we hold these rights because Congress voted on them. He said we are "endowed by our Creator" with rights that cannot be transferred or taken away.
That document — the Declaration of Independence — is the bedrock of everything that followed. The Constitution was written to protect what the Declaration said already belonged to us. Justice Thomas has called the Declaration the "sheet anchor" of the American Republic. An anchor doesn't create the ship. It holds the ship in place when the storms come.
The Declaration tells us three things about rights:
- They come from God, not government.
- They cannot be taken away. Government can violate them, but it cannot make them disappear.
- The whole purpose of government is to protect them — not to hand them out or manage them.
This was a revolutionary idea in 1776. Most of the world still lived under kings who believed rights were privileges they could grant or remove at will. The Founders said: no. The king doesn't own your freedom. You were born with it.
Why This Matters Today
Justice Thomas warned that modern progressivism threatens this foundation. That's a strong claim. What does it mean?
It means this: when people start looking to government to solve every problem, provide every need, and define every right, they are slowly giving government the kind of power that belongs only to God. Government becomes the source of all good things. And when that happens, the people are no longer free citizens. They are dependents.
Think about how the conversation about rights has changed. For most of American history, a "right" meant something the government could not do to you. Freedom of speech means government cannot silence you. The right to bear arms means government cannot disarm you. The right to be free from unreasonable search means government cannot come into your home without cause.
But today, people talk about a "right" to healthcare, a "right" to housing, a "right" to a college education. These are things that don't exist until government creates them, funds them, and manages them. When government can give you a right, government controls that right. And if you depend on government for your daily needs, you lose the independence that makes real freedom possible.
Benson saw this clearly. A people who believe government is the source of their rights will eventually accept a government that acts like it is. And a government that believes it granted your rights will eventually act like it can take them back.
The Family, Culture, and the Moral Foundation
Rights don't exist in a vacuum. They rest on a foundation of culture, character, and moral order. Justice Thomas's warning about cultural decline points to something the Founders understood well: a free republic requires a virtuous people.
The traditional family is the first school of freedom. It is where children learn that they are created with dignity and purpose, where they learn right from wrong, where they learn responsibility. When the family weakens, something has to fill that gap. And usually, what fills it is government.
When people stop believing they were created by God with inherent worth and purpose, it becomes much easier to believe that government defines who they are and what they deserve. That is the road from freedom to dependence, and it runs straight through the collapse of the institutions — family, church, community — that once held free people together.
If God gave you your rights, no government can take them. It can try. It can violate them. But it cannot make them stop being yours.
If government gave you your rights, then every freedom you have is a gift that can be recalled. You are free only as long as the people in power decide to let you be free.
The Founders chose the first answer. The only question left is whether we still believe it.