Ms. Markham, you are not incorrect, but you are correct in the wrong place.

The Founders might refer to whatever values they wish in crafting the document, and there’s no contesting they engaged in flights of verbal fantasy — “certain inalienable rights”? Rights? Absolutely. Inalienable? How does that work when you sign an indenture?

Anyway, public policy is my wheelhouse, not theology.

I’ve picked up enough theology to defend myself from monotheistic patriarchal desert cults, but don’t you dare bring theology into my courtroom. In that arena, your rights are within the four corners of the document (which is not to say they are all explicitly enumerated because we are creatures of the English Common Law)

Don’t you see the madness that lies in grounding your rights in theology? Why this right and not that one? A violation of a right set out in the Constitution has a fixed set of remedies. A violation of a right conferred by God has only one remedy, because God does not offer money judgments or injunctive relief like my court does: violence in defense of a God given right is excused.

You are absolutely right that what the government giveth, the government may taketh away. We are witnessing a wholesale diminution of individual rights now as the Department of justice is weaponized for political purposes. And it’s not the first time.

The Whiskey Rebellion.

The Palmer Raids.

The McCarthy Period.