MP3 audio

Alan Keyes
October 21, 2003

There's one thing I have to make clear from the beginning tonight, and it has a lot to do with what I'll be talking to you about. It has a lot to do with what went on in Montgomery, Alabama, and Judge Roy Moore and the reaction of folks around the country to what he did.

It's sad, but when he stood up to the federal judge who ordered him to take the Ten Commandments out of the Supreme Judicial Building in Montgomery, there were those--including folks that I know who call themselves conservatives, and had said that they stood for reigning in activist judges, and want to see respect for our Constitution and restoration of its integrity. There were folks like that who stood up and said that Roy Moore was a lawbreaker, and that they couldn't stand with him because when a federal judge says, "Jump," America must say, "How high?"

They have given us the impression that those who sit on the federal bench who wear the judge's robes have but to say it, and it has the force of law.

Well, I've got to tell you, I have all my life tried to be one who respects the law and the Constitution of this country. I wouldn't stand here before you for one minute if I felt that Roy Moore or anyone like him was violating the law. But I will say this: it is time we remembered in this country that when they founded America, they said we would have a government of laws and not of men; that we would have a government in which the law would rule, not the arbitrary dictates of any individuals.

How can we assure that this will be the case? That's the first question that's before us today, even before we get to some of the things that are so important. Rick [Scarborough] has, I think, amply presented for us the truth of this nation's Godly and religious heritage. He has also, sadly, related to us how, over the course of the last several decades, we have by virtue of the action of the federal courts been robbed of our most fundamental constitutional right; been told that as citizens we cannot reverence God, cannot mention He name, cannot pray to Him in our schools, cannot reverence Him in our stadiums, can no longer stand under His law in our legislatures and in our courts.

And all of this, we are told, because of this doctrine of the separation of church and state, which they claim is to be found in the Constitution.

Now, I've got to say, at one level, while we're reproaching ourselves for inaction, which I think as Christian believers we ought to do, we ought also though to understand that there's something very good about us that's been exploited in the course of these decades. I think, by and large, decent Americans are law-abiding people. If you stand before them and you tell them "that's the law," whether we agree with it or disagree with it, by and large, most of us feel a kind of impulse to say, "Well, we've got to submit." That's the discipline of our liberty, and it's one of the reasons that this country has worked so well.

But with respect to this phony doctrine of separation, what they have done is they have turned our reverence for law into a weapon against our reverence for God.

I think that it is time that we awaken to this fraud and reassert the truth that was right there to be seen in all our beginnings when our Founders declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

In America, from its very beginning, it was understood that the basis for all law, the basis for all justice, the basis for all claims to liberty is our reverence for the existence and authority of God!

So, I think it's very important that we should think together tonight for a few minutes about why it is that Roy Moore's critics are wrong, that the critics of those--whether it be Roy Moore on the Alabama Supreme Court or county commissioners right here in the state of Georgia--who are willing to stand against the ACLU and stand against the federal judicial dictators, why it is they who are, in fact, the patriots who are obeying the law and the Constitution.

Now, before I begin to take us through this, I do want to tell you that one of the reasons, I think, that folks on the courts thought they could get away with this is because, to put not too fine a point on it, they think Americans are now too stupid to understand the Constitution. It's true. I mean, judging by what some of them have been trying to do in the schools for the last several decades, I can kind of understand why they think we're that dumb. But, thank God, I don't believe that they have yet succeeded in dumbing down America to the extent that they would like.

They want us to think that if they could put enough legal gobbledygook together in a bunch of decisions, that constitutes the rule of law. Well, I've got news for you. You know why the wrote the Constitution down? They wrote the Constitution down so that, over the course of the decades and the centuries, the judges and the lawyers couldn't lie to us about what's in it!

They wrote it down so that we'd be able to go take a look, check up on what they were saying.

Now, as regards the separation of church and state, there is one major problem that I've always found with it. The Constitution of the United States is not a big long document. You understand that, don't you? It's not very long. It doesn't have a thousand pages in a million words or anything like that. It is, in fact, a fairly accessible document. You can get through it in the course of a couple hours if you give it a try. It doesn't take long to read.

Well, I've been through it many times. I have searched in its articles, and I have searched in its clauses, I have searched in its lines, I have even been willing to look between the lines. Guess what I didn't find? I didn't find any mention whatsoever of this claimed separation of church and state. I found it not at all.

But I know, they will ascribe this to my ignorance, my failure to comprehend, I suppose, what's on the page because any fool can see it's right there in the First Amendment to the Constitution: the famous Establishment Clause, which has been the basis for Judge Thompson in Alabama, and all the other federal judges coming forward to dictate to people at every level of government that they shall now have no right even to mention the name of God in our public and political lives.

Now, would you mind walking with me just for a few minutes through this famed Establishment Clause? I think it's worth reading, and it's not very long. And, in spite of what they say about our lack of intelligence, the words in it are actually not that hard to understand. Let's give it a try, shall we?

The First Amendment to the Constitution reads, in its first and relevant phrase, as follows:

"Congress . . . ."

Now, how many of you here know what Congress is? If you like, I'll explain it. I think that even in our present schools they still explain what it is. It's got the two houses. They sit there in Washington. We elect people to it. They make the federal laws. Yes.

One thing that they seem to neglect to tell you, though, that I'll remind you of is that, according to the Constitution of the United States, the whole and complete lawmaking power of our government is vested in the Congress of the United States. Guess what that means? It means there's none of it left over for the courts.

Yes, that's right. That ought to give us pause when somebody comes forward and tells us that Roy Moore or county commissioners or other people are breaking the law because they won't do what some federal judge says they can't do.

But let's continue walking through it.

"Congress," it says, "shall . . . ."

Most of us still know the meaning of that word.

"Make . . . ."

That's pretty simple. Make a cake, make a law, make an automobile. You know, make. Make a mistake.

"Congress shall make no . . . ."

Now, that can be a hard one. I've had a problem with that one when I was trying to explain it to my children over the years. "Which part of the word 'no' don't you understand?" But, generally speaking, after a little while and a few years all of us get to know that word. Matter of fact, that is such an easy word to comprehend, I've even been able to convey its meaning to my pet Labrador Retriever. He understands "no." And here the judges and lawyers in America think the American people are too dumb to understand it now.

But I shall give you some respect for your intelligence.

"Congress shall make no law . . . ."

Those are the rules we live by, the ones that are passed by our legislatures--the representatives of our people. And we do remember, don't we, that in order to be legitimate government must be based upon consent (they said that in the Declaration of Independence), and that consent is derived either through our direct consent (by referendum, by constitutional votes that have been taken in America) or by our choice of representatives who then sit in our legislatures and make the laws because we have elected them. If it hasn't been subject to such a vote of the people and there has been no election, then you don't make laws in America, and what you say is not a law.

I don't go through all of that just to remind us once again that none of that applies to the courts! Oh, gosh.

Well, in any case:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

Now, here we get to the tough part, I suppose--though I don't know, because there's been pretty much agreement about it. Respecting? You go to the dictionary. It's a fairly simple and accessible word. But it's the one that has, I think, been the source of all the difficulty, because they actually act as if it's not there.

They act as if the First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law establishing a religion." It doesn't say that. They always quote it, and refer to it, and so forth, as if it prohibits religious establishment, but it doesn't. It says that "Congress shall make no law respecting" that is to say, concerning, dealing with, regarding, having to do with "an establishment of religion."

Now, let's pause for a moment and think through the meaning of that. Let's say there's a dispute going on, and on one side, people want to have hamburgers at the picnic, and on the other side, there are people who want the hot dogs, and you're the one in charge of planning the picnic, and I'm the one paying for it--and I come to you and I say, "You shall make no decision respecting hamburgers and hot dogs at the picnic." So, which side are you allowed to favor? Well, I think it's pretty clear. I just told you that you couldn't touch the issue of hamburgers and hot dogs. That basically means that that issue is not going to be decided by you, it's going to be decided by the people who are coming to that picnic.

Now, why is it that these lawyers and judges think we are too stupid to realize that those words in the First Amendment to the Constitution don't tell Congress not to establish a religion, they tell Congress not to touch the issue in any way. Not for it, not against it. It's none of their business. That's what they said.

In case there might be a little doubt here, though, what happens, then, to the whole question of whether or not you can honor God, whether or not you can reflect in the law in any way your reverence for God, your respect for His law and its principles? Who gets to do that? Well, you see, the wonderful thing about the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, is that it tells us that, too.

In the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, it says very clearly that any power not delegated by the Constitution to the United States (that is, to the federal government) or forbidden to the states--now, this is the important part. Any power that's not given to the federal government or forbidden to the states, withheld from the states, is reserved to the states respectively, and to the people. Isn't that amazing?

Now, consider what we just did. What we just did was cede that in the First Amendment the Constitution withholds from the federal government any power to address the issue of religious establishment in any lawful way. In any lawful way.

Keep this in mind because all these people are coming forward, telling Roy Moore, for instance, "Roy Moore is breaking the law," and so forth. And I'm thinking to myself, you know the first question you should ask? If somebody tells you that somebody who is not obeying a federal judge's order ("take down the Ten Commandments") that that person is disobeying some law, ask them "what law?"

They'll have a hard time. Do you know why? Because the federal judges can make their decisions on the basis of federal laws, and guess what? According to the Constitution of the United States, there can be no law on issues of establishment. The Congress can't make one!

As I always was reminding folks down in Montgomery, Alabama, was one of my favorite little phrases: if Congress can make no law, Roy Moore can break no law!

And then they'll come at you, the ACLU and other people, and they'll say, "Well, it's the Constitution! That's the supreme law of the land!" I'm glad they remind us that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. I want them to remember that, I want the judges to remember that, I want the Congress to remember that. And after they've gotten done remembering it, I want them to look at the Constitution of the United States. For, in it they will find that the power to address issues of religious establishment has been reserved to the states respectively, and to the people! It's our power, not theirs!

It does not belong to the judges! It does not belong to the federal courts! It belongs to the people and the governments through which they govern themselves in the states of the United States!

You see, we have, by one simple step--and that simple step was we went and looked at the Constitution. Well, you think what a revolution it would make if the judges would go look at the Constitution. But I'll tell you: you know why the federal judges don't want to look at the Constitution on this issue? Because if they looked at the Constitution on this issue, they would have to stop looking at this issue. They would realize what we have now realized, that they don't have the right, that there is no basis in law and no basis in the Constitution of the United States for what they do.

Now, I want you to think this through very well because it's very important. If a federal judge makes a ruling that has no basis in law and no basis in the Constitution, what kind of a ruling is that? Well, I'll tell you: it's an unlawful ruling, that's what it is.

And here's the clincher. I want you to think back to some of the times when we have faced some difficulties in America, when we've had to fight against great evils--one of the was World War II, whose veterans we honored a minute ago. At the end of that war, we put some folks on trial from the Nazi regime, among others, and they tried to plead that they were doing all these atrocities and violating every precept known to human conscience because of their orders, and all of that.

As a consequence of the understanding that came from our rejection of their immoral stand, there was developed a clear understanding--which has been applied, by the way, even in the most difficult circumstance, which is the military. Can you think of any place in our lives where discipline is more important than the military? Where it is more important to impress on folks that they have to obey orders, even at the risk of their lives they've got to go forward and do what they're told? But you and I both know, don't we, that even the private soldier in the lowest ranks of the Army has, as an explicit part of the military code, not just the right but the obligation to disobey (refuse, as they call it) unlawful orders.

Now, how come these people want us to believe that what the lowliest private soldier in the most disciplined area in American life can do, the Chief Justice of Alabama Supreme Court can't do, the elected officials in Barrow County can't do, the people who speak for and represent the people of our states can't do? They can't refuse an unlawful order from the dictators on the federal bench?

I'll tell you something. If we have now reached the stage where we must lock-step, knee-jerk obey the dictate of judges on the federal bench when their orders have no basis in law or the Constitution, then we have no laws and we have no Constitution! We have only tyranny and oppression!

We reached this point on an issue that, as it turns out, is not the least important issue that a free people can face. Indeed, if we look at the example of the folks who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we would be justified in asserting that it may be the most important right of all.

Why do you think it is that in the very first words of the Bill of Rights meant to guarantee and protect the rights of the people of this country, in the very first words, the very first right that they protected was not an individual right, it was the right of the people in their states to reverence God according to their choice?

Why did they do it that way? Well, I think the experience that we've had over the last several decades ought to teach us why. They did it that way because they understood that a people that claims to get its rights from the hands of God will not hold onto those rights when they have turned their back on His authority and rejected His name and His existence!

They understood that a people who wish to live in freedom knowing that the only right basis of that freedom is the self-discipline that comes with a righteous respect for the laws and rules of conscience--they know that those laws and rules of conscience will not be likely to be respected in the absence of respect for the will of Almighty God.

We as a people have experienced, sadly, the consequences (as Rick has so eloquently reminded us) of forgetting this fundamental truth: fail to reverence God in our schools, and the tide of violence, and crime, and drug abuse rises in our schools, along with a tide of low motivation and bad performance.

We have suffered in this country, in the failing schools, in the broken marriages, in the rising tide of crime and violence, we have suffered, since they withdrew our right to reverence God, all the consequences that must follow from our abandonment of His name.

We know that the Founders put this right first for a reason: because it is, above all, the foundation from which comes our ability to stand for and understand and defend all the other rights we claim.

Without God, there is no freedom. Without faith, there is no liberty.

We have come now, I believe, to the crisis that was bound to be brought on by this effort to destroy the right of the people of this country to honor the authority of God from whom we claim our rights.

It's no accident that we live at a time now when every institution that depends upon our respect for the precepts of religious conscience, every one is under assault. Sexual discipline, the innocence of our children, the heterosexual marriage-based family--all of them under direct assault; demands are being made that the legal structures that support and strengthen those institutions must be thrown aside.

Do you think it's an accident that as we come to the crisis of each of those moral institutions, they are now trying to make us believe that under the phony doctrine of separation of church and state, we must separate God from our laws, we must separate His will from our conscience, we must abandon in our citizen lives the precepts of our lives of faith?

This is not an accident. They attempt to cleanse our moral culture of all reverence to God as a prelude for destroying every institution that depends on our allegiance to His name.

In the end, there will be no families. In the end, there will be no protection for the innocence of our children from sexual exploitation. In the end, all standards of honesty and honor will be lost, because we no longer raise up our children to live in the fear of God and in the reverent love and obedience to His will.

This is where we have come. Here's the question. I have to confess, you look around, we've put up with this for the last several decades, it looks pretty bad. And I go around, I encounter people all the time who seem to have just sort of given up, surrendered. They think it's over.

I don't. Do you know why? Because the very same Constitution that guaranteed to the people of this country the right to reverence God, according to their constitutional choice, in and through their state institutions; the very Constitution that respected that right first of all in the Bill of Rights also gave to the representatives of the people the necessary power to rein in the dictatorial abuses of the federal courts as they assault and try to destroy that right.

Why do I say this? Because right there in the Constitution, in the very article that sets up the Supreme Court, they showed their wisdom. After all, do you think that you can trust the person who is perpetrating the violation of your rights to judge whether a violation has taken place? Let's see about that.

So, the federal courts are assaulting the right of the people to reverence God in and through their state institutions, usurping a power guaranteed to us in the Constitution, and we are told that in order to try to get this right and protect this right, we have to go to the federal courts. So we shall now ask the perpetrator of the crime to stop committing it.

"Will y'all please stop despoiling us of our rights?"

"No."

Well, that's surprising. What answer did you expect? You really think that these judges, after decades of abuse, are suddenly now going to abandon their course which has despoiled us systematically of this fundamental right? They won't do it, and our Founders didn't expect that they would.

They knew very well that there can only be one proper check on the abuse of power by one branch of government, and that is to place that check in the hands of another branch of government--and that's exactly what they did.

That's why, when they put the whole thing together for the federal court system, they gave jurisdiction to the Supreme Court of the United States, original jurisdiction over a very few cases, and then they gave it appellate jurisdiction over all other cases arising under the Constitution, "with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."

When they tell you that the Supreme Court has the last word, they lie!

The last word belongs to the representatives of the people, and it's time now for them to speak in defense of our right to honor God Almighty!

We know the problem. We have felt for decades its effects, and as we are a decent and a patient and a law-abiding people, we have done what the Declaration of Independence said we should do. We have suffered while evils are sufferable. But now that we see the consequences in our lives, and in our families, and in our schools, and now that we know the true extent of this project, to impose atheism at every level of government from top to bottom, we must declare to them without equivocation: this evil is not sufferable! We will stand for it no longer!

That is why we have come together here tonight, and why people are coming together in places all over America, and will continue to do so, place after place and state after state. It is not enough for us to understand the wrong that has been done to us. It is not enough for us to be angered by the wrong that has been done to us. It is not enough for us to be anxious and concerned that they should rob us of our right to be reverent citizens and believers. It is not enough!

We must now stand together and take effective action to reassert that right which is ours under the Constitution of the United States. And that is what I would appeal to you tonight to think about and do. For, as we come together here, I hope it is not just for a moment in which with some kind of catharsis can take place, and we'll go back home, and I don't know that we'll be feeling any better. No, don't feel any better, because the only time we should better is when we have finally seen the result that removes this threat from the horizon of our liberty.

And we can produce that result. Right now, there are people at work in the Congress. They are at work on bills that, using the power the Constitution gives them, will remove from the purview of the federal courts all those issues that ought to be reserved to the states and the people by the First Amendment to the Constitution!

They have no right to tell us we cannot pray! They have no power to tell us we cannot put the Ten Commandments in our schools and in our public buildings! They have no constitutional authority to stand in the way of our reverence for God in and through our state institutions!

And if wish to regain this right, then it is time now for each and every one of us, wherever we may be, to commit ourselves that in our lives as citizens we shall, by letters, by phone calls, by letters in the newspapers, join together in an effective movement that does not end tonight but begins here, that is part of a flame that shall spread across this country until, in its light, we shall see reborn the spirit of America's respect for God Almighty.

You are the key! You are on the front lines of this battle, where we must stand, as our soldiers have stood, on far-flung battlefields around the world; where we must be willing, as they have been willing, to risk all so that our liberty will be preserved.

Our job we cannot perform with guns and bullets, but we can perform it by standing up to use those instruments that, by our Constitution and our laws, are in our hands, to demand that our representatives in Congress will act and act now, will join in sponsorship of those bills that seek finally to end this dictatorship of the judges.

I hope you realize that in doing so, we are not just reclaiming our most fundamental right of piety and faith. We are also, finally, reclaiming the true form of government that ought to exist in this country under our Constitution.

I think Lincoln defined it well. He said it was government of the people, by the people, for the people--what our Founders called "republican government," the self-government of the people through their elected and chosen representatives under constitutions that they have reviewed and ratified; no other sources of law but those that respect this process of obtaining the consent of the people.

You know, the beauty of such a way of life is that by handing to us the ability to assure that our laws will correspond to our hearts, they also hand to us the opportunity to make God the Sovereign in our land if He is the Sovereign in our hearts.

It is this ability that they would now steal from us. It is this ability that they would undermine. And some think it's just an incident, but you know in the Constitution itself there is a provision that says that the United States (that's the national government) shall guarantee to the states of the union, each and every one of them, a republican form of government. That's what it says.

A government of the people, by the people, for the people. What do you think becomes of such a government when we agree to the doctrine that one judge, without any foundation in the law or the Constitution, can make law in America? That nine justices, without any foundation in the law or the Constitution, can make law in America?

If we accept this doctrine, then we no longer have government of the people. We have, instead, dictatorship of the judges; dictatorship of the few; an oligarchy fastening upon us; not rule of, and by, and for the people, but a tyrannical rule of the few for purposes dictated by an agenda that would assault the very utmost foundation of our nation and our faith.

We do not have to accept this result. No. We must not accept this result--not only for our own good and the good of our present generation, but for the sake of all those blessings which we owe to children and to our posterity. We must stand now together in defense of our right! We must stand now together in restoration of our Constitution! We must stand now together to restore that government which is to be in the hands of the people, so that we can deliver it into the hands of our God!