Have you read the Declaration of Independence? You know, the document that, in a very real sense, transformed the 13 colonies into the nascent United States of America. 

When Abraham Lincoln uttered the famous words "Four score and seven years ago," the date to which he was referring was 1776, not 1787 when the Constitution was ratified. 

Well, apparently, POLITICO investigative reporter Heidi Przybyla failed to take her American History classes seriously, because she hasn't got a clue about the ideological foundations upon which our country was founded. 

Here @MSNBC helpfully makes it clear their disdain for Christians in America.

She says that if you believe that your rights come from God, you aren’t a Christian, you are a Christian nationalist.

Somehow they seem to not mention that our own founding documents make this… pic.twitter.com/WTLMqcqTzg

— Wade Miller (@WadeMiller_USMC) February 23, 2024

Heidi appeared on "All in with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC to bloviate about "Christian Nationalism," a term that keeps popping up in the Left-leaning media despite having very little relevance to politics in America. 

Somehow, the Left has decided that MAGA Republicans, who nearly worship a man whose moral compass is not exactly pointing to true north, are raging theocrats who want to impose a Christian version of Sharia law in the United States. This is the only possible explanation for their lack of desire to kill babies, groom children in schools, and chop off the healthy body parts of the mentally ill. 

Heidi has identified the source of this impulse, apparently, and it is that MAGA Republicans agree with the Founding Fathers that rights are not granted by governments, but rather inhere in the individual who is a creation of God. 

How do I know this? I have read the Declaration of Independence (and most of the works of the Founding Fathers, as in a previous life I taught Political Philosophy). 

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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.--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 alter or to abolish it, and 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all 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. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Now I don't count these beliefs as Christian Nationalism, both because the Founders were well read not just in Christian theology but also Islam, at least. In fact, Thomas Jefferson's Koran (you know Jefferson largely wrote the Declaration, right?) has been used to swear in Congressmen. 

The Declaration was carefully constructed, making an argument to the world about why the Americans decided to revolt against England.

• All men are equal
• God gives us rights 
• Governments cannot alienate these rights from us
• Governments exist to protect our God-given rights
• When governments fail to do so, people have a right to disband their governments and replace them. 

Our country was founded on these assertions. They are the bedrock upon which the United States of America was built. 

And Heidi Przybyla went on MSNBC to warn the country that dangerous radicals also believe these shocking ideas. 

Well, at least we know where she and MSNBC-types stand, and it isn't with the American Founders. 

We shouldn't be surprised, I guess, that Heidi and her confreres despise American principles. They are the neo-communists who are determined to "fundamentally reshape" America into something unrecognizable here. 

It is China to which their longing gazes turn. Social credit systems. Censorship. State policies on population. Regulations about everything. A surveillance state. 

Your rights are what the Elite say they are, and they don't include autonomy. Not bodily autonomy. Not parental autonomy. Not freedom of thought or speech. 

Politico: Trump's 'Christian Nationalism' Includes the Radical Idea of ... Child Support

Old and busted: "Ultra-MAGA!" New hotness: "Christian nationalism!"https://t.co/G16Si1n3UN

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) February 20, 2024

The sad thing is that her audience largely agrees with her because they are the people who are empowered to run our lives. It's a heady brew for potential tyrants, and they drink it up. 

Me? I'll stick with the Founders' principles. 

It is "Nature and Nature's God" from which human rights come. Not some government bureaucrat, MSM hack, or public health official who wants to experiment on my body.