{"id":31931,"date":"2026-05-14T14:39:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=31931"},"modified":"2026-05-14T14:39:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:39:05","slug":"clarence-thomas-warns-progressivism-threatens-americas-god-given-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2026\/05\/clarence-thomas-warns-progressivism-threatens-americas-god-given-rights","title":{"rendered":"Clarence Thomas Warns Progressivism Threatens America\u2019s God-Given Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Adobe Stock | Overlay: Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at the University of Texas<\/a> (UT) in Austin where he urged Americans to be familiar with the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence. He praised Dean Justin Dyer and the new School of Civic Leadership, asking that the school\u2019s mission be \u201cto revitalize the teaching and research of Western civilization and the American constitutional tradition will lead the way in the reform of our nation\u2019s colleges and universities.\u201d While emphasizing the importance of the Constitution, Thomas referred to the Declaration as the foundation of America. \u201cThe Constitution is the means of government. It is the Declaration that announces the ends of government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thomas lamented mistakes of past Supreme Courts, including the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson which \u201cendorsed government-enforced racial segregation and validated the Jim Crow South that I grew up in.\u201d He claimed the decision had been made under the temptation of expedience. \u201cIt could not possibly have taken my Court 60 years to know that Plessy was a hideous wrong,\u201d he said. He also warned against the dangers of progressivism, calling it \u201cretrogressive.\u201d \u201cProgressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government,\u201d he warned. He encouraged his listeners to embrace courageous citizenship, one that rejected complacency and defended the ideals of the US.<\/p>\n

In an op-ed for The Christian Post<\/em><\/a>, John G. West emphasized the importance of rights coming from the God and not the government, a view that less than 4 in 10 Americans hold today. \u201cSocieties that do not believe human beings are fundamentally equal have caste systems or worse. In the American South, the Declaration of Independence\u2019s proclamation of equality was repudiated in order to uphold slavery and then Jim Crow,\u201d he wrote, adding that \u201cSocieties that do not think their rights come from God end up having no hard limits on government power or government intrusions into the Church, the family, and the economy.\u201d He also warned against the move away from the view of people as inherent sinners, claiming such views have led to electing tyrants in \u201c<\/p>\n

the hope of creating Heaven on earth.\u201d \u201cThey produce the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and Mao\u2019s China \u2014 not the American Revolution,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

Justice Thomas is perhaps one of the most revered living justices on the right. Conservative lauded his speech, calling it \u201cextraordinary.\u201d \u201cIn addition to its sweeping condemnation of progressivism, his speech is an immediate classic in civics formation,\u201d wrote Andrew Walker<\/a>, professor of Ethics and Public Theology at Southern Baptist Seminary. \u201cBut that the speech\u2019s content is now so foreign, so unfamiliar, to so many, reveals how successful progressivism has been in memory-holing our national inheritance. Progressivism is a civic, moral, and theological cancer. It must be fought against and defeated if there is to be an American order (and moral decency).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at the University of Texas (UT) in Austin where he urged Americans to be familiar with the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence. He praised Dean Justin Dyer and the new School of Civic Leadership, asking that the school\u2019s mission be \u201cto revitalize the teaching and research of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":31934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nClarence Thomas Warns Progressivism Threatens America\u2019s God-Given Rights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Clarence Thomas warns progressivism threatens America\u2019s founding truths, saying rights come from God, not government.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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