Today's quote

Word up, Professor DeLong.

Here in the United States, we are all children of Thomas Jefferson. God does not give us rulers. Instead, God gives us rights: to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We then institute governments to secure these rights, and they derive their just powers from our consent, not from God's decree. Moreover, it is not the YHWH of Revealed Religion but instead "Nature's God" and Nature itself that are the source of these rights.

He says this in the context of a long post where he observes that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said that “government comes from God.”