Senator Paul Ryan. Senator, GOP leader, writer of budgets.
In this little interview he says rights come from god and are not given by governments. That may be true but God is incredibly bad at keeping those rights for his people and never once has he intervened, personally, to lend a hand. It has always been our job to raise the armies, take the casualties and shoulder the burden while God sits idly by without even a muted cheer.
Even the founders knew better. The declaration states that, "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men". I guess there is no need for those first ten amendments to the constitution either. With god on our side who the hell needs a Bill of Rights?
Being an atheist god and I have a tenuous relationship and if Ryan does not mind I prefer a rule of law to a theocracy.
Ryan is here
Paul Ryan: Repeal health law because rights come from God | The Raw Story
The declaration is here. (Although our patriotic and learned rightwingnuts should have no need of verification. This holy text should be burned into their memory if not their soul)
Declaration of Independence - Text Transcript
The construct that the rights of men are derived from God, not the government, is the antithesis of theocracy. The rule of law wherein the powers of the government are emphatically delineated and limited follows from that. The only theocracies, as it were, are those societies that do not heed the only authentic Source and Guarantor of human rights. Such are inevitably subject to statist governments.
Further, the Founders most certainly would not agree with you. They would laugh at your sophomoric drivel. The Lockean philosophy of government, the theory that guided them, begins with (1) the derivation of humans rights—Divinity—and proceeds to (2) the general consent of the governed. You confound two distinct things. You are deluded and ignorant about the philosophical origins and logical prerequisites of an enduring democratic rule of law.
I know a number of atheists who are not so stupid. While they do not believe that God exists, they are wise enough to embrace the Lockean philosophy of government as though He did, recognizing, from historical experience and the self-evident fundamentals of realty, the collectivist and statist nature of the alternative.
But of course they are not silly leftists, but classical liberals like myself.