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CHAUTAUQUA -- Let's pick up where we left off last week.
Speaking to Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, on July 20, retired Lt. Col. Allen West discussed remarks by a U.S. senator.
Coincidentally, ABC's July 13 speaker had discussed the same remarks by the same senator.
West, however, identified the senator not by name but only as the Democrats' 2016 vice-presidential candidate.
The senator's remarks were at a 2025 hearing for an undersecretary-of-state nominee.
Here's what happened.
The nominee quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio: "We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator--not from our laws, not from our governments."
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Before getting to the senator's response, let's back up.
Some on the nominee's side of the debate frame the point differently.
For example, some say our rights come from natural law.
For another example, others say government has only those powers that We the People surrendered to government in the first place, and it has no others.
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However one frames the point, the senator disagrees: He believes rights come "from laws" or "from the government."
Here's the senator's response to the nominee's point, as quoted in a column in The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper: "The notion that rights don't come from laws and don't come from the government, but come from the Creator--that's what the Iranian government believes," he said. "It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sh(ar)ia law and targets ... religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling."
Please think this through: What's wrong with this response?
What the senator misses is that the Iranian system is based on different beliefs than the American system, or indeed any Western system.
No American, or other Western, point that "rights … come from the Creator"--or however one frames this point--collapses just because Iranians, or others, have different beliefs. Whether they're "extremely troubling" is irrelevant.
As the saying goes, this ain't rocket science.
Not at all.
But there's more: To doubt the nominee's point -- again, however one frames it -- is to doubt the Declaration of Independence, which says: "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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
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Conveying such founding principles is part of the task that West -- whom ABC's website identifies as a Christian constitutional conservative, combat veteran, and former member of Congress -- sees for Americans: To pass on to the rising generation "the longest running constitutional republic the world has ever known."
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West, again rightly, notes this isn't about Democrats or Republicans but about understanding the relationship between the individual and government: "The individual is sovereign."
He encourages challenging young people toward "rugged individualism": "be all you can be."
Meanwhile, socialism has different goals.
West draws on a famous line about socialism by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Speaking in Perth, Scotland, on May 28, 1948, Churchill said, "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."
Churchill, not surprisingly, is right on target.
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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.
ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is "to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua" Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.
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Dr. Randy Elf's Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on "How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich," is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ebymA7xOo.
COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RANDY ELF