August 21, 2003

HANNITY: I'm Sean Hannity. We get right to our top story tonight. Last night, Chief Justice Roy Moore told us right here on Hannity & Colmes that he would fight to keep a monument of the Ten Commandments inside the Alabama state Judicial Building, despite a federal court order to remove it. Thousands now have rallied and are rallying in support of Judge Moore, including our next guest. Joining us from Montgomery, Alabama, is former presidential candidate, our good friend, Ambassador, Dr. Alan Keyes.

How are you, sir? Welcome back. It's been a while, we've missed you. It's good to see you again.

KEYES: It's good to be with you, Sean. Thank you.

HANNITY: You've got thousands of people vowing to lay down and try and prevent any effort to remove this monument from that building. Where does it stand right now?

KEYES: Well, right now, in the course of the day, as you probably know, the eight associate justices have taken action to overrule Judge Roy Moore, and have ordered the removal of the monument. As yet, no action has in fact been taken, but that is where things stand at the moment.

HANNITY: But we have two things that happened in the last 24-36 hours, Ambassador. One, the Supreme Court refused to block the removal of this, and also Chief Justice Moore's colleagues have come out against him and asked that they remove this monument expeditiously--which was a big disappointment to him.

KEYES: Well, I think it was--though, of course, he anticipated the fact. And we have been watching, as folks in the state hierarchy showed what I think is real cowardice in defense of the right of the people of the state of Alabama to acknowledge God in and through their state institutions, as the Constitution provides--free from federal interference, free from federal meddling and intervention. That's what the First Amendment, in its first clause, is, in fact, all about.

HANNITY: I can't see really fully behind you as you are right outside the Judicial Building there. How many people are there now?

KEYES: I'm really not sure--I just arrived. It looks like a goodly crowd that has gathered for the evening rally. It's actually now starting to be a nightly event.

HANNITY: I want to ask you this question here. Our Declaration of Independence--and you know this, you're a great scholar of this nation's history. They speak of God, they speak of natural rights. Our Founders similarly speak of God, they speak of natural rights. It seems that courts in the past--if it's Dred Scott in slavery, if it's Plessey vs. Ferguson in segregation, or even Roe vs. Wade in abortion--that courts get issues wrong. If it's a natural right issue, if our rights come from God, as the Declaration says, Ambassador, then Justice Moore is correct in saying he should stand against courts when they're wrong. Correct?

KEYES: I think the great problem in the first instance, though, Sean, and the problem that I have most of all is that if Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion--that is to say, and some people say that means they can't establish a religion. No. It means they can't address this issue. They can't touch it. It is very clear, those words are simple: no law respecting this issue.

And when people say, "You're breaking the law if you don't do what this court, judge, says," I say, "Where is the law? What law?" Do judges now get to have diktats? Are we under a dictatorship of the bench, where we outlaw our foundations? They can simply tell you what to do?

HANNITY: Let me ask you this thing--and I can hear the sound of the crowd. It sounds pretty enormous there. Is there not a concerted effort or campaign to replace God-given rights, if you will, with man-made privileges here? Isn't that what they're ultimately saying, that there's a choice here? If the effort begins here, if this is a watershed here--mark--is it not "In God We Trust" in coins, "one nation under God" in the pledge, Congress can't start with a prayer, "God save the court"--all of these things now go away?

KEYES: Sean, I think that we have to focus, though, on the clear constitutional issue. At the national level, there is no doubt that we are not supposed to have any kind of national, uniformly-imposed regime, with respect to religion. And Congress shouldn't make any laws--the federal government has no lawful basis--for doing so; that was clear in the Founders' statements and intentions. They wanted these issues to be handled at the level of the state governments, and the level of the people, themselves, in and through their state governments. They were to decide to what extent they would acknowledge God, in what way, in what manner they would do so, in and through their government institutions.

What we're seeing is an effort to impose a uniform national regime of atheism on religious matters, and that is deeply unconstitutional.

COLMES: Now, I don't know how you get from a decision not to allow the Ten Commandments to sit there, to imposing atheism. That's quite a leap. But ah, welcome to the show. It's good to have you back. It's been a while.

Look, also, one man doesn't get to decide. You have the associate justices who have now overruled Justice Moore, and they say, and I quote, that they are bound by solemn oath to follow the law, whether they agree or disagree with it. Aren't they right? Don't they have an oath to follow the law? If a higher court says, "You must do this," doesn't a judge have a responsibility to obey?

KEYES: But you're not listening. As usual, you're not listening.

COLMES: No, now--I think that that's a cheap shot, Alan.

KEYES: Can I finish?

COLMES: It's a cheap shot, and it's unfair.

KEYES: Can I finish, Alan?

COLMES: Yes. I was listening. Go ahead.

KEYES: I said no, because you need to address the issue I raised. You keep saying "respect for the law." Respect for the law does not mean respect for lawyers. And the rule of law does not mean the rule of lawyers and judges. It means the rule of law. They, too, are bound by the law. They, too, are required to have a basis in law for what they do.

And when people say some law's being broken here, I say, "What law?" He's [U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson's] a federal judge. He needs a federal basis for what he's doing. But Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion. He has no grounds, no basis whatsoever, from which to address this issue. He's a lawless judge who is taking his opinions from out of the air, not on the basis of any law, and imposing them against . . .

COLMES: No, it's because you disagree.

KEYES: . . . not because I disagree, but because the Constitution makes clear, Alan . . .

COLMES: Look, now you're filibustering, Alan. And you're accusing me of not listening. It's this judge [Justice Moore] who's not listening to a higher court, and he's not even listening to his associate justices on his own state Supreme Court. He's the one not listening.

KEYES: He's listening to the Constitution of the state of Alabama, and the Constitution of the United States--which he is sworn to uphold. And which, by the way, the governor and even the president and everybody else is sworn to uphold and preserve, protect, and defend. And that Constitution is clear: the federal government should not meddle in these matters. The Tenth Amendment leaves them under the purview of the states.

The whole train of legal precedents that has been fabricated, fraudulently, from the bench has no basis in our Constitution. And to say that we must simply submit to baseless dictation from the bench is, as Jefferson, himself, pointed out, to surrender to judicial despotism.

COLMES: I'd like to ask you this: how is it, as you've just accused--and you're also quoted by the Southern Baptist group--you've accused these people who want the Ten Commandment plaque removed of promoting atheism? What is it--because you don't believe that you should establish a plaque or a symbol in a courtroom, you're promoting atheism?

KEYES: No, no. Did you read the decision?

COLMES: Yes, I did.

KEYES: Because in the decision . . . let me finish . . . In the decision, the judge, himself, says that the issue is whether the state can acknowledge God. That's what he says. I didn't make that up. He says that that's the core issue, and he says the answer is no. He is imposing, through his order, this atheism, and he has said so himself.

So you say I'm inventing it because you haven't looked at the clear, plain words. We need to look at the clear, plain words of the Constitution, as well.

COLMES: You're wrong. Again, you're making a false accusation. I've looked at it, and here's what the decision said: if you adorn the walls this way, should you adorn them with murals, with decidedly religious quotations? Should every government building be topped with a cross, with a menorah, a statue of Buddha? Where do you draw the line? How many 5300-pound Ten Commandments should you have? If you have one, can you have twelve? Can you have fourteen other symbols?

KEYES: Excuse me, excuse me. Alan, Alan. The clear issue is, he says, whether the state can acknowledge God. My clear question, based on the Constitution, is whatever arcane disagreements you want to get into, the Constitution says this is not a matter for the federal government.

HANNITY: Ambassador, we . . .

KEYES: It is a matter for the people in their state government. And they can have this debate, they can have this argument, they can make up their minds.

HANNITY: We have to take a break. Ambassador, stay right there. We'll go back to Montgomery, Alabama, with Alan Keyes right after this break.

[BREAK]

COLMES: We now continue with Alan Keyes.

Taking your argument, Alan, that the state, only the state, not the federal government, can make decisions having to do with religion, does that mean that a state could decide that they are a Christian state, a Muslim state? Could Alabama say, we are going to declare ourselves a Christian state or an Islamic state because we . . . and we can't be interfered with by the federal government. Would that be constitutional?

KEYES: Well, you know that when the First Amendment was written and adopted, there were, I believe, seven of the states that had the Church of England established, there were five other religions that were established in other states. There was one state that did not have an established church. Now, there were varying degrees and extents of what this meant and how they implemented it--but in point of fact, it was in place at the time. And, yes, the Founders did mean that one could go even as far as England has gone, if that was. . . Now, that wouldn't be the will of anybody in America today, you can bet, but it shows the extent to which this amendment was meant to countenance, on the part of the people of a state, an expression of the desire to see reflected in the laws and the institutions their religious beliefs.

So, I'm not saying it. This is the way it was when the amendment was written.

COLMES: You're saying that . . . your position is, your view and your interpretation is that the state can declare itself of a particular religion. But here you have a chief justice that is being disagreed with by his own associate justices. They are saying this is wrong. They're saying, "We want to obey the law." They're telling him he's not obeying the law. These are other people, on the state level, who don't agree with you or Justice Moore.

KEYES: Excuse me--excuse me for saying so, but I think it's time we got away from this rut of believing that we live under some arcane priesthood of the lawyers, and we don't get to believe the evidence of our own eyes and common sense when we read the basic documents of our country's history.

We should not turn over our liberties to arcane interpretations and fabrications by a legal clique that desires to amass great power over every aspect of our lives and tell us we no longer have a say. That despotic judicial dictatorship was predicted by Thomas Jefferson, and he said that we should reject it--and we must now.

HANNITY: Ambassador, I want to ask you this question. Explain how the Ten Commandments provides the basis for America's jurisprudence. Explain that.

KEYES: It seems to be quite clear. A matter of fact, it was acknowledged by the Founders that the Ten Commandments are the ten basic and simple rules. What do we need to know?

"Thou shalt not steal": that's laws against theft.

"Thou shalt not kill": laws against murder.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness": the whole apparatus that exists in our courts and in our lives to guarantee that testimony in our courts will be truthful--and where, by the way, all through our history, the oath has been "so help me God"!

It seems to me we are trying to destroy the moral foundation evident in every age of our history, and let a clique, a handful of people, rob us of the collective right we have to see the acknowledgment of God in our laws, through our state institutions, as the Constitution provides.

HANNITY: Well, we are rejecting the moral underpinnings of our society, which our Founders--there's no ambiguity when you read our Founders. There's no ambiguity in their writings. They were crystal clear in how they felt and what they believed.

But what's more interesting, you and Alan were going back and forth a little bit over this issue of jurisdiction as it relates to "is there any federal jurisdiction here?" But the Alabama Constitution, which Chief Justice Moore is sworn to uphold, clearly it says, as a matter of fact, that the recognition of God is the foundation of that state's constitution.

KEYES: Well, I think that that is very clear. And that means, that as the Chief Justice--this is not just an individual. He's an elected chief justice, he has told the people of his state what he stood for: the Ten Commandments. He was known as the "Ten Commandments judge" when he ran.

HANNITY: And they elected him.

KEYES: And he has an obligation under the [state] Constitution to act in a way that reverences God. He is actually a representative of the people of his state. He's not just an individual. And he has an oath that he has to abide by at the highest level of his state, representing the sovereignty, in this matter, of his people.

If he simply surrenders to the dictates of a federal judge, on a matter where there is no clarity of federal jurisdiction, he surrenders the sovereignty of his people.

HANNITY: One last question: are you willing to go to jail? Are you willing to go to jail? And I have to break.

KEYES: I have made it very clear: if people say that Roy Moore will be threatened with jail, I will not let him stand alone, come what may.

COLMES: All right, Alan. Thank you very much for being with us.

KEYES: You're welcome.