I Dissented, but Entered Unanimously.

Nature. And Nature’s god. https://t.co/qYbX4k24cV

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 13, 2026

True, that's language Congress ultimately approved in the Declaration, which was essentially a public relations exercise.  But neither Nature nor G-d can really do shit on Earth to protect our rights, which is why I find this to be a more important element in the paragraph that followed:

[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.

And while "rights of Nature" won the day, I think dissenters had the better argument, as recorded by John Adams:

• Rutledge: Our Claims I think are well founded on the british Constitution, and not on the Law of Nature.
• Duane: Upon the whole for grounding our Rights on the Laws and Constitution of the Country from whence We sprung, and Charters, without recurring to the Law of Nature -- because this will be a feeble Support.
• Galloway: I never could find the Rights of Americans, in the Distinctions between Taxation and Legislation, nor in the Distinction between Laws for Revenue and for the Regulation of Trade. I have looked for our Rights in the Laws of Nature -- but could not find them in a State of Nature, but always in a State of political Society.

Even delegates, including the guy who introduced the actual independence resolution, invoking natural rights did not rest their arguments solely on them:

• Lee: The Rights are built on a fourfold foundation -- on Nature, on the british Constitution, on Charters, and on immemorial Usage.
• Jay: It is necessary to recur to the Law of Nature, and the british Constitution to ascertain our Rights.

In fact, the Lee Resolution, ostensibly the legal basis for declaring independence, doesn't expound on the source of our rights at all:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Yet there's a basis for a declaration even firmer than any notion of rights, that being practical reality:

[T]he question was not whether, by a declaration of independance, we should make ourselves what we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists:  

Attributed to Franklin in HBO's John Adams miniseries, although it is unclear from Jefferson's notes which specific individual made the observation.  Continuing with said extant fact:

That as to the people or parliament of England, we had alwais been independant of them, their restraints on our trade deriving efficacy from our acquiescence only & not from any rights they possessed of imposing them, & that so far our connection had been federal only, & was now dissolved by the commencement of hostilities:  

That as to the king, we had been bound to him by allegiance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to the late act of parliament, by which he declares us out of his protection, and by his levying war on us, a fact which had long ago proved us out of his protection; it being a certain position in law that allegiance & protection are reciprocal, the one ceasing when the other is withdrawn...

My emph added.

Anyway, the entire exercise sure as hell wasn't unanimous, no matter where our rights come from.  And both Nature and Nature's god have been awfully silent on the matter, so I don't know why we have to keep bringing them into this.

Selah.