(Written in response to Kerry Dougherty’s column “Tim Kaine Needs a Copy of the Declaration of Independence.” — JAB)

by Paul Goldman

Kerry, you can’t trust AI. Let this be a good lesson. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence — later edited by Franklin and Adams to keep the Southern states all-in on the Revolution — what did he mean by “inalienable rights?”

No need to bore anyone with too many details. Especially when Kerry’s asking Senator Tim Kaine to resign for failing to read a founding document.

Since President Trump regularly claims the Constitution says what it doesn’t say, I guess Kerry’s asked him to resign too. I consider myself a good Kaine supporter. But if Kerry’s willing to throw Trump under the bus along with Kaine,  I’m sorry, Timmy, but I gotta take that deal. Like the president says, all things are transactional. Even inalienable rights.

Kerry is right on one thing: Our public school system will now actually have to go back to teaching these historic documents once again. But what does Kerry think they’re gonna teach exactly? 

Jefferson and his boys were really playing a word game back in the 18th century. We need to ask ourselves: When they wrote those stirring words in the Declaration of Independence, they also knew only a handful of Americans actually had actual access to those rights. So yes, technically, all the slaves, all the white women, all the indentured servants, all the White guys with little property, had those rights in theory. But they never had those rights in reality for centuries. Most importantly, however, they would have no chance of getting them at least here in America unless the Revolution succeeded and actually gave us a democracy. 

I ask Kerry to consider this: If these were rights you already possessed forever from birth, why would they need the Revolution to succeed in order to possess them?

Had Kerry read further — instead of relying on AI to tell her what was in the document — she would’ve found these words.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to…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 effect their Safety and Happiness. (A)ll experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

This, of course, is what Senator Kaine referenced. The Pope might have a direct line to God, but he didn’t fight Hitler. The reason is easy: He didn’t have an army. 

As a Jew particularly, I understand this very well. Kerry is right, we had those rights all the way back when we were building the Pyramids for free. Although I admit later research says it wasn’t the Jews that built them despite what Charleston Heston said in the movie. Plus, they did not drag those huge blocks tens of miles across the desert. Give the Jews a little credit for something. The latest research proves something I said back in grade school. They floated the blocks on the Nile, which at the time had tributaries right up to where they built the pyramids. Ain’t no Jew gonna lug no block that far for no pharaoh. We didn’t care what Yul Brenner wanted.

 I’m gonna be like Donald Trump on this one, and accept only the facts I want. The quote by Ronald Reagan about the Panama Canal sums it up: paraphrasing, we Jews built the damn things, so we own them. We got 5,000 years of reparations coming plus interest. In the spirit of compromise, I will wave reimbursement for the attorney’s fees. 

The Declaration of Independence is a document written to justify a revolution. This revolution is based on a radical concept never before asserted in the civilized world by 56 accomplished people in writing all willing to lose their lives for a point of principle. At the time it had been accepted for centuries that your rights, whether a full English citizen or a colonist, came from the monarch. He or she owned you and all you had. On a whim, a Monarch could send could send his men and seize all you had. You could, of course, like St. Thomas More, give an irrefutable defense in the courtroom. But the truth didn’t matter unless King Henry VIII wanted it to matter.

As the Declaration makes clear, without a government willing to protect your rights, they only exist on paper.

This is what Senator Kaine was saying. It is what the signers said themselves. Jefferson and his boys wrote it right there on the parchment for you to read it.

That’s the reason some smart religious scholar came up with the theory of Free Will. Otherwise, God would be on the hook for giving you something and not helping you keep it.

I do appreciate the Creator giving me all these good things. Very decent thing to do. But, then, the same Creator for millennia gave us people who don’t respect these rights, willing to kill us for trying to assert them, and laughing at the concept that somehow you have rights they don’t want you to us. Go wave some unalienable rights in front of Attila and his Huns. 

Next time, I would urge Kerry to read the whole document before commenting. She might find out Jefferson and the guys were smarter than she thinks: They weren’t relying on the Creator to secure their rights. They knew better.

Paul Goldman is former Chair of the VA Democratic Party, a former candidate for mayor of the City of Richmond, and author of “Remaking Virginia Politics.”