Speech
Super Rally for Bill Sali
Alan KeyesMay 19, 2006
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Praise God. Thank you very much.
Now, those of you who know my sterling track record in politics . . .
[laughter]
. . . will understand the significance of what I'm about to say, following on Bill's wonderful remarks. I think the most important thing that I could say to start off with tonight is that if every single pundit were predicting that Bill Sali were going to lose; if there were not a soul who believed that he had a chance at victory; if there was nothing on the horizon but gloom and doom and defeat, I would be standing right here, right now, to tell you that the man you ought to support is Bill Sali.
[applause]
And what that means . . . Now, I will be honest with you. It will be not entirely novel to support a winner.
[laughter]
You might call it, in my case, one of those euphoric experiences that really joys the spirit.
[laughter]
But I think the most important thing to understand is that, as I look around the country, and as folks look for me for people that they can then tell me about and recommend, and so forth, the key thing that I look for is not who is going to win, but through whom will America win.
[applause]
Through whom will our liberty win? Through whom will our Constitution win? Whose victory will be a victory for our posterity, so that they can enjoy the freedom and the dignity that we take for granted?
And that's why I'm here tonight. And I'm here in a context, as well, that I believe has to be emphasized. Now, I'm going to have to say in the next few minutes some reasonably gloomy things. But I don't believe we can possibly understand the importance of not squandering the voices and heart and spirit that will stand in Washington to champion the conservative cause. We can't squander the opportunity that is represented by the state of Idaho. You can't do this to us.
Every single voice that speaks with a real sense of commitment and allegiance to the Constitution, to the principles of self-government, to the sovereignty of the people under the sovereignty of God--every such voice in our time today may be the voice that will save this republic from the destruction toward which it is certainly headed as we speak.
[applause]
And I think it's time we woke up. We go, I know, through the motions of our politics. All of us have done it through our lives. We look back on decades and two centuries in which Americans have done it over, and over, and over again, confirming the hope that our Founders had when this nation was founded.
But I want to tell you right now--and will, I think, establish it chapter and verse in the next few minutes. Lincoln said we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. And that is the challenge before this generation.
It's not going to happen. It's not something that, next year or next month or in a decade or in a generation, may happen. The fate of the American republic is being decided right now.
It is being decided by our determination to reclaim the sovereignty of our people, restore the character that is needed to sustain our liberty, reestablish our right to acknowledge the sovereignty of Almighty God, from Whom our rights come. We will accomplish these things, or our freedom will fall.
[applause]
And on every front--on every front now--sadly, we can see that that's the real crisis that we are in.
It's exemplified by a number of other crises--the first and foremost of which, in my opinion, is the crises to which Bill Sali has devoted his consistent and principled political life, and that is the crisis of our respect for innocent life in the womb.
Oh, I know, on any given day of the week, and especially now, some other issue may drive this from our concern. There will be people telling us we should put it on the backburner, and so forth. But if we are willing to take the issues of deep moral conscience that represent and epitomize the principles of our nation's heart and soul and put them aside, then we, ourselves, are putting aside the hope of our country.
For the truth is very simple. Either the first principle of our life, that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, is true or it's not. If it is not true, our liberty fails. And if we don't respect it, then our republic dies.
And evidently here, as with slavery in the nineteenth century, so in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this great issue of life springs before us in such a way as to challenge us--not just in our legislatures, not just in our courts, not just in those places where we could plead, "It was our leaders, it was our judges." No. An issue like this deprives us of all excuses. For, it comes right to us, right to our homes, right to our hearts, right to our own individual consciences, to ask the salient question: "Will you apply in your choices the understanding of justice and conscience and right which is the basis for your claim to have any choices at all?"
And it's not being asked in some formal way. It's being asked in a very personal, a very intimate way, of every American citizen, of every American woman, of every American family or family-to-be: "Will you respect the principles of your liberty in the choices that you make, and in your willingness to submit to that discipline of truth, especially the truth that makes us free?"
That's what the issue of the innocent life in the womb has always represented. It also, of course, is one of those aspects of our crisis that clearly exemplifies the truth that we are not only in danger of losing our republic in terms of its freedoms--we are seeing the loss of the republic come into fact because our institutions of freedom are being subverted and destroyed.
Roe vs. Wade, it's sad to say, is one of the preeminent examples of that very institutional complacency. Why do I say this? Well, in a government based on consent, you organize the Constitution, as our Founders did, in such a way that the most important issues of legislation and lawmaking and all the things that go into what the laws will be [come down to this:] who should make those laws? Well, if government is based upon consent, then those laws ought to be made by the part of government that is based on the consent of the people. Last time I looked, that was the legislature. And, lo and behold, our Founders in every state and in the federal Constitution vested the whole power of legislation, the whole power to make the law--didn't put it in the hands of the judges, didn't put it in the hands of the governor or the president--they put it in the hands of the representatives of the people.
[applause]
Now, before [Justice Harry] Blackmun wrote his famous decision, I hope you will recall that the issue of abortion had, in fact, been brought before the people in forty-eight out of the fifty states, and, in every single case, every single time, the people had rejected the regime of abortion that Blackmun would impose through Roe vs. Wade.
We really should be shocked at that. Why should we be shocked? Well, because that means that nine folks--in this case, five--on the Supreme Court were able to impose their will, contrary to the will of the people, as expressed in their votes, as expressed through their legislatures.
How did they do this? I know how the lawyers tell us they do it. They do it through what they call the power of "judicial review." You know that one. Where does that come from, though? Some people talk about it as if it's the power of the judiciary, when they decide cases, to strike down the laws of the legislatures.
Do the courts have the right to strike down the laws of our legislatures? They do not. Do the courts have the right to spit on the will, the sovereign and express constitutional will, of the people of this country? No. They explicitly do not have that right, and couldn't possibly get it from anywhere.
[applause]
So, what's the argument of judicial review? Well, the argument of judicial review was first made by, among other people, Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, in Federalist 78.
It's fairly simple. It's common sense. If I'm a judge, and somebody comes before me, and there's a law that's just been passed by a legislature or the congress, and I go through it, and, oh, I come across a provision of it that contradicts what's in the constitution of the state or of the United States, what am I to do?
"Jeopardy!" music sounds. This should be fairly simple.
[laughter]
Hamilton argued, correctly, that the judge is required by his oath to prefer the permanent and fundamental will of the people, as expressed through the Constitution, to the incidental and transient will of those in the legislature--of the people as expressed in the legislature.
That actually makes a lot of sense, because otherwise we wouldn't have a constitutional system, would we? No, we wouldn't. Then we'd have a system of legislative tyranny, in which the legislatures were not bound by the Constitution. That wouldn't work.
So, it's a perfectly commonsense argument--but what does it mean? Does it mean that the judiciary rules over our government? No. See, that's what they want us to believe.
As Hamilton pointed out, this argument does not imply that the judiciary is superior to the legislature. It implies, rather, that the power of the people is superior to them both. That's what he said. See?
Now, what does that mean, y'all? It means that, at the end of the day, the reason that the judges have any authority at all is because they derive that authority from the consent of the people--and that consent can be expressed in two ways in our system. It can be expressed in the laws passed by the legislature, or it can be expressed in the constitutions, federal and state, ratified by the people. Those are the only two sources of just and legitimate law in these United States.
Let's go through Roe vs. Wade. What do we find? Did Blackmun base the decision on what's in the Constitution? Did he base it on what's in laws? No! He didn't.
He said that the salient issue was whether that life in the womb was a person. He looked at the use of the word "person" in the Constitution, and said, "Oh, I don't see it used anywhere but referring to people after birth. So, that dismisses what the Constitution has to say. Can't decide it on that basis, so what do we do?" And he looked everywhere. He looked in philosophy; he looked in historic books; and he looked in the ancient history; he looked into practices of this place and that; he looked at a few this's and thats that had been done in state governments; he looked into foreign law, and then came to the conclusion that the law does not regard the fetus as a person.
And every time I read that phrase I say to myself, "What is he talking about?" He says "the law," as if there is some law for the American people not grounded in their consent; not passed by constitutional means through their legislatures; not embodied in their constitutions.
That's a fine way to make a judgment, isn't it? When in doubt, make it up!
[laughter]
Impose your own arbitrary opinion, and act as if we are ruled over by some abstract notion of "the law" that is fabricated by the judges!
Does this make sense to somebody here? Because, if you accept that, then you accept the tyranny of judges, not the rule of law. As we understand it, the rule of law can only be established legitimately by constitutional means. Depart from those means, and there is no just law.
What, unfortunately, is clear also in Roe vs. Wade is that Blackmun wasn't really interested in seriously following the Constitution, because if he'd been interested, he'd have found that the Constitution does provide guidance on this subject--clear and serious guidance. The kind of guidance, for instance, that the courts have used to justify the expansion of federal powers into all these different areas of social welfare and health and education that are nowhere specified in the Constitution as such, but which they introduce as legitimate functions of the federal government by citing, what? "Well, the Preamble says that the federal government is to 'promote the general welfare.' Therefore, they can do all those things."
And when they looked at the defense issues, they looked again and were trying to decide about various prerogatives that the federal government can have in terms of the appropriation of land, in terms of other things that they had to do for the sake of our national security, and right there the Preamble says that the objective of the whole government is to "provide for the common defense," and so forth and so on.
The Preamble doesn't dictate a particular action, but it does guide the interpretation of the Constitution--they've said this themselves--so that when one interpretation is consistent with the preambular objective, and another interpretation opposes those objectives, the one consistent with those objectives is, they have argued, to be preferred.
But by that argument, let's look at the Preamble. "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare. . . ." Oh, there's that one! The last one, the final one, the ultimate one. The item in that position was often the most important in lists in the eighteenth century. But what is that ultimate objective? "To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Fascinating, isn't it?
What does that word "posterity" mean? It means those who will come after us, those sprung from our loins and from our wombs who will come after us. It means those who are not yet born, who yet will be our future generations!
[applause]
So tell me something. Why did Blackmun say there is no guidance, when right there in the Preamble to the Constitution, our posterity is put in its claim to liberty and the blessings of liberty on equal footing with ourselves? How dare he ignore that claim!
[applause]
And I wish I could tell you that this was something that just focused on the fate of that poor child in the womb, but it's not. When you turn your back on posterity, when you turn your back on the future, you are turning your back on the deep and true discipline and obligation of citizenship. You are turning your back on the truth that our Founders wrote into the Constitution, that we are not as a people to use our opportunities of liberty for ourselves alone, but must always use them in a way that respects the claims of future generations.
That's not something that just applies to respect for life in the womb. It would apply to how you deal with Social Security. It would apply to how you deal with the defense and national security of this country. It would apply to how you respect the sovereignty, the language, and the national security of our borders in this country, because every time we sacrifice to our whims and needs and arbitrary interests today what is required to safeguard the liberty and prosperity and future of this country for tomorrow, we violate that fundamental intention of the Constitution.
Now, that being clear, if we are really committed to constitutional self-government, then we will be pro-life, because we must respect the claims of liberty of our posterity. We will be against a spendthrift government that digs deeper and deeper into the pockets of our people, that controls more and more of their income, that deprives them of the ability to save and build up resources that they could hand on to their children, because that would violate our obligation to our posterity. And, most of all, we will act to safeguard constitutional self-government, to safeguard a legacy of liberty, so that as it came into our hands, we will pass it to our children and their children, not diminished, but improved; not weakened, but strengthened for their use.
Are we doing that today?
You know, I've got to tell you that, in spite of the fact that when Bill gets to Congress, he, like all the other folks there--and, by the way, like folks in our legislatures, and folks in other levels of our government. Everybody swears what when they take their oath? They swear an oath to, in various words--it may differ slightly--uphold, protect, support, defend, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the state in which they reside. Isn't that right?
What does this oath mean? If you want to look at the way our politicians behave these days, it doesn't mean a thing.
[laughter]
I mean it. When was the last time somebody got up in front of the people of this country, debating a great issue, and talked about the impact that a given action was going to have on our capacity for self-government? When was the last time they spoke about the impact a given action would have on the integrity of our sovereignty as a people?
And yet, self-government and the sovereignty of the people are the essence of what it means to be a republic. And the preservation of our republic is not just a nice idea. It's actually, under Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution, a constitutional obligation of the federal government in particular.
So, if we don't pass on the republican form of government, we have violated our obligation to the future, we have destroyed the legacy that we are supposed to hand on to our posterity.
And yet, at every turn in this society, we are doing just that. What we have just illustrated with Roe vs. Wade is a shift, a fundamental shift of power. We have allowed the sovereignty of the people, as exercised through their representative legislatures, to be usurped by unelected judges who now purport to lift up or tear down or otherwise dictate the contents of the law. The separation of powers isn't even a fiction anymore, because the judiciary has claimed to itself the ultimate legislative prerogative.
And they are doing it at the state level; they are doing it at the federal level; they are doing it at every level. And every time they do it, they strike another blow against the republican government in this country. They strike another blow, destructive of the sovereignty of the people of this country. They destroy another element of the legacy we are to hand on to our children.
They have done it systematically in their decisions on abortion. They have done it systematically on decisions that have regard to the conscience and moral life of our people.
You and I both know that down through the history of humanity, it has been the most important political issue.
I know there are lots of people who would like to write their tomes now and pretend that it was all about money and materialism. That's not true. Most of the great wars in human history were not fought over money and materialism, contrary to the lies a lot of revisionist historians like to tell us. Most of the great wars in human history were fought over what's right and what's wrong; who is God, and who is not; the issues of justice, the issues of conscience, and the issues of faith.
And these are the issues that even in our time represent the cause of our struggles, and the root of those things which are paramount in our world today.
What is the war against terror? Is it a war over financial this's and thats? It's a war that's essentially being financed by a bunch of folks who are getting all their power and wealth out of the ground in oil mines, against countries that are deriving their power and wealth from industrial production and technological and scientific sophistication. There's money on all sides. It's not a fight about economics. It's not a fight over financial this's and thats.
The president of Iran was quite clear on it the other day. He wrote a letter to the President which, sadly, I think hasn't been answered yet--I hope they will--in which his claim was that what he called "liberal democracy," the system of self-government and constitutionalism based upon the full participation of the people, that it has failed, that it is corrupt and it leads to corruption and destruction and immorality. He swung down the gauntlet to say that all our way of life is indecent and immoral and unjust, and that is why it must be destroyed.
The war against terror, when we analyze it, is what? A war about whether it is legitimate to use violence against the innocent in order to achieve your political purposes.
Ratify that as a legitimate instrument of political and governmental life, and you have ratified the principle that has been throughout the centuries of human existence at the heart of every despotism, at the heart of every tyranny, at the heart of every regime of oppression that has ever existed on the face of the earth.
The fight against terror is not just a fight against some group of ideologically- or religiously-driven thugs. It is a fight against the very principle of evil that this nation was founded to refuse. And that principle is not a principle of money and materialism. It's a principle of justice and conscience, of decency and right. That's what we fight for.
[applause]
But if that's true, that these are in fact the most important issues, that they are the issues of life and death that ultimately confront us with the most powerful and important causes for war and for the defense of our liberty, don't you think that it's really important that those kinds of decisions should be reflected in a government that's based on consent, that they should be made by rules that respect the very principle on which our government is based?
Think about it, my friends. Whether it's abortion, or whether it's traditional marriage, whether it's respect for the obligations of parenting and family life--all of these moral issues that are now on the table are paramount. Who's claiming to decide those issues in our country today?
The courts are claiming that they decide them. Courts who are elected by nobody, courts who are ultimately responsible, they claim, to nobody have taken the right to make the most important life-and-death decisions of right and conscience out of the hands of the people, to be made by a little oligarchy--a high priesthood of the legal profession who purport to tell us now that they are the arbiters of our Constitution, and that we have no right to read and understand that document on our own.
That's exactly why they get away with the things they do. They get away, in fact, with pulling the rug out from under the very foundation of moral life, which is our respect for Almighty God, right there in the first principle of our liberty: all are created equal, endowed by their Creator.
No Creator, no liberty; no Creator, no rights; no Creator, no justice; no Creator, no government by consent; no Creator, no republic.
And yet, what are we told by our courts? We are told again, and again, and again, by every means that the people have no right to honor God, have no right even to mention His name!
When are we going to wake up? Our whole claim to rights is based on an appeal to God, and we are now told by the courts that we can't even mention His name--what happens to our claim to rights when we can no longer appeal to the authority of God when we assert, and claim, and demand, and fight for those rights?
Heart fails, conscience fails, courage fails, because we are pushed again into the darkness of submission and ignorance and subservience that blasted the hopes of millions of human beings down through all the centuries of human oppression.
And yet, the courts have gotten away with this. Why? Well, they tell us, "Separation of church and state is required by the Constitution."
One of the things you can do, thankfully, because we have a Constitution--the advantage of having a written Constitution, as I often try to remind people, is what?--you can read it! Oh, boy!
[laughter]
No, that's very good. You know, being able to read it yourself means you don't have to look to the judge. If the judges say, "This is what it says," you can go look!
The judges say the Constitution requires separation of church and state. I'm sure all of you have gone and taken a look. If you go through it from top to bottom, from one end to the other--it's a brilliant document, as exemplified by the fact that, even though it has established one of the most powerful, successful governments in the world, it is the shortest constitution ever written, probably. And so, it doesn't take long to get through it!
You don't even have to take an afternoon to get through the U.S. Constitution. You could probably do it in couple of hours--if you're a speed reader, it could take you forty-five minutes or less. Go all through the Constitution, if you look at it sideways, backwards and forwards, guess what you won't find mentioned in the Constitution, at all, anywhere? Separation of church and state.
Then where do they get this? Well, they tell us that they get it from the First Amendment. So, I looked it up, and what does it say? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
And then they say, "Ah! There it is! Can't establish religion!"
Is that what those words say? Let's go back and look.
"Congress shall make no law. . . ."
That's pretty easy, "Congress." That's that body we send people to, and then, except for Bill Sali and people like him, they forget where they come from.
[laughter]
"Congress shall make. . . ."
"Shall make" is pretty easy. You know, make, produce, fabricate.
"No. . . ."
Now, that's a hard one.
[laughter]
It is! It is! How many people here have raised kids? Raise your hands.
[laughter]
You know how hard that is. I had a seventeen-year-old son who still didn't understand the meaning of that word.
[laughter]
But, truth of the matter is, though, I am confident that once he gets a job . . .
[laughter]
. . . And he's confronted with that word coming from the mouth of the guy who signs his paychecks, he will probably improve his understanding wonderfully.
[laughter]
So, most of us will arrive at an understanding of the word "no" at some point along the way, don't we? It's not that hard.
"Congress shall make no law. . . ."
Laws: the rules that the representatives of the people are supposed to make.
"Respecting. . . ."
Well, that could be a hard one, except that it isn't. There's only been one meaning throughout our history. The word "respecting" means, simply, "concerning, with regard to, on the subject of."
"An establishment of religion. . . ."
That could require some historical this's and thats, but we don't even have to know what that is. Do you realize we could understand the meaning of that first phrase of the Constitution if you just put parenthesis around "establishment of religion," and wrote "X" instead?
"Congress shall make no law respecting (X)."
Does that mean that "X" cannot exist in America? No, that's not what the words say! The words say only this, that Congress, the lawmaking body for the federal government, cannot legislate on the subject of or anything that has to do with "X."
Now, someone needs to explain to me how, out of those words, the federal courts that are supposedly governed by the Constitution get the notion that they have the right to do what those words say no part of the federal government can do?
They are part of the federal government, aren't they? Congress does make the laws that establish the authority of the federal government, don't they?
The only way that [the courts] could get any [authority to rule on religious questions] is if some part of the Constitution gave it to them. And we know that the Constitution doesn't.
Now, I know there are those shrewd lawyers who [say otherwise]. But the 14th Amendment doesn't, because it says that the states have to respect all persons' constitutional rights, and you can't deprive anyone of due process. Nevertheless, they use that to argue that all of the rights of the first ten amendments have to be applied to the individual states, and therefore they can dictate to the states about these things.
Here's the problem with that, though. For a moment, let's grant--in a general sort of way, I don't necessarily, but let's grant--that that 14th Amendment argument is valid. It simply means that the rights established by the first ten amendments must be respected by the states.
But in this particular case, when you talk about rights and privileges and immunities, what's established in the first ten amendments, step number one, is immunity from federal legislation on the issue of religious establishment (since it's not supposed to exist); and step number two, the 10th Amendment says that any power not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the states is reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
So, according to the first ten amendments, the right to deal, the power to deal with the issues involved in religious establishment does not belong to the federal government, does not belong to the federal courts, it belongs to the states and to the people of this country! How did the judges get their hands on it, on the federal bench?
[applause]
Now, I go through all of this like this because we've got to understand, what I have just walked you through is the way in which the courts stole from us the way to see our consent as the basis for decisions that are taken about morality, about conscience, about piety. All these decisions will now be made, regardless of our consent, by a handful of judges.
That's not a republic. That's oligarchic oppression--rule by the few, without regard to the consent of the people.
[applause starts]
And if you understand what I just told you--don't applaud, because it's so sad. What I have just told you is that our republic has already been overthrown, that our sovereignty has already been taken from our hands! And if we don't do something about it, this game is already over.
Now, one last illustration of this. One of the most salient issues right now is immigration. I would actually want to amend that to what I believe is the proper way to talk about this: one of the most salient issues, of course, right now is border security.
But let's think about that for a minute.
We are confronted by an issue where, every time I've looked at anything that they've polled, and done this, and done that, and done another thing, put aside all their ins and outs of what we might or might not do with the 12 million folks who have already gotten in through our borders, the one thing we all can seem to agree on is that we ought to close the back door. "Somebody hit the back door up, and go lock it!"
[laughter]
"We're not sleeping very well at nights, with that door open! There's a draft in here!"
[laughter]
And so, there's a great opinion amongst the American people that we ought to have secure borders.
Duh!
[laughter]
It's not an agreement that's shared by our leaders. You know, I have great respect for most of these leaders, like President G.W. Bush. But I must confess that when I looked at him the other night, I was kind of shocked. Because, there he was, looking the American people in the eye and saying we do not have full control of our borders.
I was sitting there thinking to myself, "We do not have full control of our borders?" I was not elected president. You were elected president!
[laughter]
I think it would have been better if he had said, "I do not have full control of our borders; my administration does not have it; the federal government, under my leadership does not have it."
But if he had said that, it would have been pretty clear that what he was telling us was that, six years into his term of office, he hadn't been doing his job. Most presidents aren't going to tell you this straight in the front. But that's what he was saying. He apparently didn't realize that's what he was admitting, but he was.
If this was the day after you elected him, a month after you elected him, even five months after you elected him, I could still think he's talking about a failure of his predecessor.
Six years, almost, into somebody's term, you don't turn to the American people and say, "I haven't been doing my job," unless you're willing to give them an explanation. I should would like to know why not--and I think most people in this country would like to know why not.
We are a reasonably forgiving people, but an explanation does help.
What could possibly be the explanation? But what's even worse, without even looking for an explanation of why they haven't been doing their jobs, you have to consider what it is that they consider to be the top priority.
All the folks around the country say, "Shut the doors! Make sure that we don't aggravate this problem further, and then worry about it." It's pretty logical, actually, I think.
Now, let's say your basement's flooded. What's the first thing you do? Figure out a strategy for bailing out the water?
[laughter]
No! I remember one of the most famous dictums of my original life in diplomacy, was something that I picked up when I was in orientation when I was with the State Department. And the guy who was in charge of the orientation was often fond of telling all kinds of stories, and so forth. He told us a story one night about his tenure, and what he'd been doing when he got into so much trouble with the government, because he had said something and then he kept going back and tried to correct it, and made a mess.
And after he told us this story, he looks us in the eye and said something that all of you probably already know: "When you've found that you have dug yourself into a hole, what is the first thing that you ought to do?"
"Stop digging!"
[laughter]
Would somebody write this on a little piece of paper, stuff it in a bottle, and send it to the folks in Washington, D.C.? "You have dug us into a hole, with respect to the security of our borders. Would you kindly stop digging? And shut the door?"
[laughter, applause]
Why is this hard to understand?
And don't come to me talking about what should we do with the water, and how should we bail it out, and can we purify it, and what shall we do to subvert it, and all this stuff. Let's not talk about that just yet, because we're still about to drown if you don't turn the spigot.
[laughter]
I think most people in this country get that. Now, I don't mean to speak uncharitably of the President, but I think it's time that he and the leaders in the Senate also got that little tiny paper understood.
And that's without prejudice, by the way, to what may or may not happen, once the door is shut, and we feel confident that we're in control. But the great problem is that if we don't get control of the borders, does anybody here believe that anything they put in legislation means anything?
I would ask the President to consult his Secret Service folks for some common sense on that. When they're going to take him anywhere, like if they were going to bring him into this room or into this building, what's the first thing that they're going to make absolutely sure they do before they even have the roster of who can get in and who can't get in, and what insignia they will use, and how you identify them, and how you clear them? What's the first thing you've got to do? You want to establish a secure perimeter and make sure you control who gets in, who's going out. Right?
That's common sense. I wish we'd talk to them, because I think it's common sense for the country, too. If we want immigration laws that are effective, we must have control of our borders, so that the only people who come in come in on the terms of our law.
[applause]
If you argue about the terms before you secure the border, I suspect you're lying to us. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Leaders with the track record our leaders have right now had better not expect us to "trust them" when they tell us they're really serious about border security. I don't trust them one bit, and I don't think anybody else will.
In this particular case, "by their fruits, ye shall know them," and if the fruits are millions more illegal immigrants, then we're not going to know our leaders anymore.
But the truth of the matter is, that's one of the issues that's a reflection of the will of our people. If the folks who are sitting in the legislatures and in congress actually start moving in response to the [pro-illegal immigration] marchers in the streets and all this sort of stuff, what does that say about the sovereignty of our people? When the folks who are elected to be our representatives no longer need us, no longer serve us, and no longer protect us at the most fundamental level, which is the integrity of our perimeter, what does it say about our sovereignty? Because, if they're not serving us, who are they serving? If they're not representing us, who are they representing?
See, I think we're in the midst of a great crisis, and it's far gone already. We shouldn't be thinking about who we're going to send to Washington to go [unintelligible] this issue. We need to think about who we shall send to Washington to join with those who mean to save this republic while we can.
And that's why I'm here tonight: in order to have somebody who's going to join with the right forces, who's not going to be pushed off of it because this or that interest wants to put money into his political coffers, because this or that one was offered some political favors; in order to find the heart and the spirit and the conscience that will not be moved by his own ambition but instead will hold fast to the real goal, which is to serve and secure the Constitution and the liberty of our people; in order to find somebody like that, you can't listen to the words, you can't listen to the speeches alone, you have got to look at the life.
And that's why it's so all-important, as people are deciding here, to go over the track record. Who has been willing to stand for life before anybody else said it was popular? Who was willing to be there? Who was willing to take a stand? Who was willing to take the risk of going out front to establish the terms on which the people of this state would deal with this issue of conscience? And who did it, not once, not twice, but every single year throughout their career of service to the people of Idaho?
That's the person. And by their fruits, ye shall know them--folks who are willing to stand fast to a real concept of self-government.
Think about taxes for a moment. Some think it's all about money, and so forth. No, it's not. People who think taxes are only about money don't understand the nature of power. Our Founders did. In the dictum that they repeated over and over again in their writings, they quoted Blackstone, "the power to tax is the power to destroy."
That means if you abuse the tax code, you're not just taking people's money, you are destroying their means of power--destroying their capacity to take care of their families; destroying their capacity to support their churches and their civic groups; destroying their capacity to put together the political associations that will promote the things that they believe are necessary for their community and their society.
If you take the taxing power, and encroach upon it, and take more, and more, and more of the resources of the people, then you reach a certain point where the people who are supposed to control the government instead are a people controlled by the government, because the government dictates how much of their resources they shall keep in their pockets.
And that's where we are today. We have already accepted a pervasive tax system, and the reason the politicians talk all the time as if, when they give us a tax cut, they're doing us a big favor, is because under the current tax system, that's exactly true.
You know, if I grant to the government the power to tax my income, and I leave at their discretion the percentage they can tax, who has control of my income? They do. What's to stop them from setting it at 100%? Only a momentary prudence--and the moment they get past that point, they'll take it, any time they think they can get away with it.
And every year, we docilely send the signal they can get away with more and more--and they have, and they will.
To stand against that, what do you need? You need somebody who understands that you're not just talking about money, you're talking about sovereignty; you're not just talking about money, you're talking about liberty; you're not just talking about money, you're talking about the ability of a people to conserve its strength, to defend its conscience, to build up its institutions of conscience in its churches and its synagogues, and to stand where a people must stand: on grounds independent of the government's power over them!
And that is why, year after year, time after time, somebody like Bill Sali will stand up, understanding in his heart that it's not just about money, it's about the liberty of the people of this state, and it will be about the liberty of the American people.
[applause]
We desperately need this kind of courage in Washington--and we need it, not just in words, but in the consistent commitment of heart, mind, life, and deed that Bill has already exemplified.
It is, I know, a rare thing when you find that kind of consistency in politics. But when you do, remember: all of us will get down on our knees, we'll pray for the President, pray for the country, we'll pray for God's blessing down on America, but let's not be so silly that we can't take "yes" for an answer, and that when he puts before us somebody who exactly fits the time and need, we don't have the sense to rally around, not an individual, but what he represents--not just a person, but the principles of truth and integrity, of piety and self-government, of God's fierce justice that he represents.
Cast a vote in that fashion. You are fulfilling that deep obligation which is there in our Constitution, but which I hope is still there in our hearts, that which bids you to work not just for ourselves, but for our posterity; to work not just for ourselves, but for the dignity, the virtue, the conscience, the faith, the happiness of those we have seen and the children we have raised, and those we shall never see, but who will live, as the Israelites did, in a promised land that Moses never saw, in a promised land that we helped to make possible, which is the future of our great county.
I think that future hinges on what the people of Idaho decide to do in this election. It's always the case to certain extent, but if you've been hearing what I've said tonight, then you know that we live now in a time when, like never before, the decisions we take in politics are decisions we take for the whole republic, for the whole future of our freedom.
I pray God that you won't make that decision lightly--and that, more than that, you will commit yourself in prayer, and with money, and with heart, and with labor, to work so that your fellow citizens will rise up and join you in that decision, committing to the kind of work that will make it clear that whatever the gloom may seem today, yet the darkness will be dispelled by the fire of our enthusiasm, of our energy, of our faith, of our commitment to God and to our county.
As we live that commitment, the sword shall not bear, and Bill's victory shall but be the first step in a victory for all Americans.
God bless you.
[applause]
Now, those of you who know my sterling track record in politics . . .
[laughter]
. . . will understand the significance of what I'm about to say, following on Bill's wonderful remarks. I think the most important thing that I could say to start off with tonight is that if every single pundit were predicting that Bill Sali were going to lose; if there were not a soul who believed that he had a chance at victory; if there was nothing on the horizon but gloom and doom and defeat, I would be standing right here, right now, to tell you that the man you ought to support is Bill Sali.
[applause]
And what that means . . . Now, I will be honest with you. It will be not entirely novel to support a winner.
[laughter]
You might call it, in my case, one of those euphoric experiences that really joys the spirit.
[laughter]
But I think the most important thing to understand is that, as I look around the country, and as folks look for me for people that they can then tell me about and recommend, and so forth, the key thing that I look for is not who is going to win, but through whom will America win.
[applause]
Through whom will our liberty win? Through whom will our Constitution win? Whose victory will be a victory for our posterity, so that they can enjoy the freedom and the dignity that we take for granted?
And that's why I'm here tonight. And I'm here in a context, as well, that I believe has to be emphasized. Now, I'm going to have to say in the next few minutes some reasonably gloomy things. But I don't believe we can possibly understand the importance of not squandering the voices and heart and spirit that will stand in Washington to champion the conservative cause. We can't squander the opportunity that is represented by the state of Idaho. You can't do this to us.
Every single voice that speaks with a real sense of commitment and allegiance to the Constitution, to the principles of self-government, to the sovereignty of the people under the sovereignty of God--every such voice in our time today may be the voice that will save this republic from the destruction toward which it is certainly headed as we speak.
[applause]
And I think it's time we woke up. We go, I know, through the motions of our politics. All of us have done it through our lives. We look back on decades and two centuries in which Americans have done it over, and over, and over again, confirming the hope that our Founders had when this nation was founded.
But I want to tell you right now--and will, I think, establish it chapter and verse in the next few minutes. Lincoln said we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. And that is the challenge before this generation.
It's not going to happen. It's not something that, next year or next month or in a decade or in a generation, may happen. The fate of the American republic is being decided right now.
It is being decided by our determination to reclaim the sovereignty of our people, restore the character that is needed to sustain our liberty, reestablish our right to acknowledge the sovereignty of Almighty God, from Whom our rights come. We will accomplish these things, or our freedom will fall.
[applause]
And on every front--on every front now--sadly, we can see that that's the real crisis that we are in.
It's exemplified by a number of other crises--the first and foremost of which, in my opinion, is the crises to which Bill Sali has devoted his consistent and principled political life, and that is the crisis of our respect for innocent life in the womb.
Oh, I know, on any given day of the week, and especially now, some other issue may drive this from our concern. There will be people telling us we should put it on the backburner, and so forth. But if we are willing to take the issues of deep moral conscience that represent and epitomize the principles of our nation's heart and soul and put them aside, then we, ourselves, are putting aside the hope of our country.
For the truth is very simple. Either the first principle of our life, that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, is true or it's not. If it is not true, our liberty fails. And if we don't respect it, then our republic dies.
And evidently here, as with slavery in the nineteenth century, so in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this great issue of life springs before us in such a way as to challenge us--not just in our legislatures, not just in our courts, not just in those places where we could plead, "It was our leaders, it was our judges." No. An issue like this deprives us of all excuses. For, it comes right to us, right to our homes, right to our hearts, right to our own individual consciences, to ask the salient question: "Will you apply in your choices the understanding of justice and conscience and right which is the basis for your claim to have any choices at all?"
And it's not being asked in some formal way. It's being asked in a very personal, a very intimate way, of every American citizen, of every American woman, of every American family or family-to-be: "Will you respect the principles of your liberty in the choices that you make, and in your willingness to submit to that discipline of truth, especially the truth that makes us free?"
That's what the issue of the innocent life in the womb has always represented. It also, of course, is one of those aspects of our crisis that clearly exemplifies the truth that we are not only in danger of losing our republic in terms of its freedoms--we are seeing the loss of the republic come into fact because our institutions of freedom are being subverted and destroyed.
Roe vs. Wade, it's sad to say, is one of the preeminent examples of that very institutional complacency. Why do I say this? Well, in a government based on consent, you organize the Constitution, as our Founders did, in such a way that the most important issues of legislation and lawmaking and all the things that go into what the laws will be [come down to this:] who should make those laws? Well, if government is based upon consent, then those laws ought to be made by the part of government that is based on the consent of the people. Last time I looked, that was the legislature. And, lo and behold, our Founders in every state and in the federal Constitution vested the whole power of legislation, the whole power to make the law--didn't put it in the hands of the judges, didn't put it in the hands of the governor or the president--they put it in the hands of the representatives of the people.
[applause]
Now, before [Justice Harry] Blackmun wrote his famous decision, I hope you will recall that the issue of abortion had, in fact, been brought before the people in forty-eight out of the fifty states, and, in every single case, every single time, the people had rejected the regime of abortion that Blackmun would impose through Roe vs. Wade.
We really should be shocked at that. Why should we be shocked? Well, because that means that nine folks--in this case, five--on the Supreme Court were able to impose their will, contrary to the will of the people, as expressed in their votes, as expressed through their legislatures.
How did they do this? I know how the lawyers tell us they do it. They do it through what they call the power of "judicial review." You know that one. Where does that come from, though? Some people talk about it as if it's the power of the judiciary, when they decide cases, to strike down the laws of the legislatures.
Do the courts have the right to strike down the laws of our legislatures? They do not. Do the courts have the right to spit on the will, the sovereign and express constitutional will, of the people of this country? No. They explicitly do not have that right, and couldn't possibly get it from anywhere.
[applause]
So, what's the argument of judicial review? Well, the argument of judicial review was first made by, among other people, Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, in Federalist 78.
It's fairly simple. It's common sense. If I'm a judge, and somebody comes before me, and there's a law that's just been passed by a legislature or the congress, and I go through it, and, oh, I come across a provision of it that contradicts what's in the constitution of the state or of the United States, what am I to do?
"Jeopardy!" music sounds. This should be fairly simple.
[laughter]
Hamilton argued, correctly, that the judge is required by his oath to prefer the permanent and fundamental will of the people, as expressed through the Constitution, to the incidental and transient will of those in the legislature--of the people as expressed in the legislature.
That actually makes a lot of sense, because otherwise we wouldn't have a constitutional system, would we? No, we wouldn't. Then we'd have a system of legislative tyranny, in which the legislatures were not bound by the Constitution. That wouldn't work.
So, it's a perfectly commonsense argument--but what does it mean? Does it mean that the judiciary rules over our government? No. See, that's what they want us to believe.
As Hamilton pointed out, this argument does not imply that the judiciary is superior to the legislature. It implies, rather, that the power of the people is superior to them both. That's what he said. See?
Now, what does that mean, y'all? It means that, at the end of the day, the reason that the judges have any authority at all is because they derive that authority from the consent of the people--and that consent can be expressed in two ways in our system. It can be expressed in the laws passed by the legislature, or it can be expressed in the constitutions, federal and state, ratified by the people. Those are the only two sources of just and legitimate law in these United States.
Let's go through Roe vs. Wade. What do we find? Did Blackmun base the decision on what's in the Constitution? Did he base it on what's in laws? No! He didn't.
He said that the salient issue was whether that life in the womb was a person. He looked at the use of the word "person" in the Constitution, and said, "Oh, I don't see it used anywhere but referring to people after birth. So, that dismisses what the Constitution has to say. Can't decide it on that basis, so what do we do?" And he looked everywhere. He looked in philosophy; he looked in historic books; and he looked in the ancient history; he looked into practices of this place and that; he looked at a few this's and thats that had been done in state governments; he looked into foreign law, and then came to the conclusion that the law does not regard the fetus as a person.
And every time I read that phrase I say to myself, "What is he talking about?" He says "the law," as if there is some law for the American people not grounded in their consent; not passed by constitutional means through their legislatures; not embodied in their constitutions.
That's a fine way to make a judgment, isn't it? When in doubt, make it up!
[laughter]
Impose your own arbitrary opinion, and act as if we are ruled over by some abstract notion of "the law" that is fabricated by the judges!
Does this make sense to somebody here? Because, if you accept that, then you accept the tyranny of judges, not the rule of law. As we understand it, the rule of law can only be established legitimately by constitutional means. Depart from those means, and there is no just law.
What, unfortunately, is clear also in Roe vs. Wade is that Blackmun wasn't really interested in seriously following the Constitution, because if he'd been interested, he'd have found that the Constitution does provide guidance on this subject--clear and serious guidance. The kind of guidance, for instance, that the courts have used to justify the expansion of federal powers into all these different areas of social welfare and health and education that are nowhere specified in the Constitution as such, but which they introduce as legitimate functions of the federal government by citing, what? "Well, the Preamble says that the federal government is to 'promote the general welfare.' Therefore, they can do all those things."
And when they looked at the defense issues, they looked again and were trying to decide about various prerogatives that the federal government can have in terms of the appropriation of land, in terms of other things that they had to do for the sake of our national security, and right there the Preamble says that the objective of the whole government is to "provide for the common defense," and so forth and so on.
The Preamble doesn't dictate a particular action, but it does guide the interpretation of the Constitution--they've said this themselves--so that when one interpretation is consistent with the preambular objective, and another interpretation opposes those objectives, the one consistent with those objectives is, they have argued, to be preferred.
But by that argument, let's look at the Preamble. "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare. . . ." Oh, there's that one! The last one, the final one, the ultimate one. The item in that position was often the most important in lists in the eighteenth century. But what is that ultimate objective? "To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Fascinating, isn't it?
What does that word "posterity" mean? It means those who will come after us, those sprung from our loins and from our wombs who will come after us. It means those who are not yet born, who yet will be our future generations!
[applause]
So tell me something. Why did Blackmun say there is no guidance, when right there in the Preamble to the Constitution, our posterity is put in its claim to liberty and the blessings of liberty on equal footing with ourselves? How dare he ignore that claim!
[applause]
And I wish I could tell you that this was something that just focused on the fate of that poor child in the womb, but it's not. When you turn your back on posterity, when you turn your back on the future, you are turning your back on the deep and true discipline and obligation of citizenship. You are turning your back on the truth that our Founders wrote into the Constitution, that we are not as a people to use our opportunities of liberty for ourselves alone, but must always use them in a way that respects the claims of future generations.
That's not something that just applies to respect for life in the womb. It would apply to how you deal with Social Security. It would apply to how you deal with the defense and national security of this country. It would apply to how you respect the sovereignty, the language, and the national security of our borders in this country, because every time we sacrifice to our whims and needs and arbitrary interests today what is required to safeguard the liberty and prosperity and future of this country for tomorrow, we violate that fundamental intention of the Constitution.
Now, that being clear, if we are really committed to constitutional self-government, then we will be pro-life, because we must respect the claims of liberty of our posterity. We will be against a spendthrift government that digs deeper and deeper into the pockets of our people, that controls more and more of their income, that deprives them of the ability to save and build up resources that they could hand on to their children, because that would violate our obligation to our posterity. And, most of all, we will act to safeguard constitutional self-government, to safeguard a legacy of liberty, so that as it came into our hands, we will pass it to our children and their children, not diminished, but improved; not weakened, but strengthened for their use.
Are we doing that today?
You know, I've got to tell you that, in spite of the fact that when Bill gets to Congress, he, like all the other folks there--and, by the way, like folks in our legislatures, and folks in other levels of our government. Everybody swears what when they take their oath? They swear an oath to, in various words--it may differ slightly--uphold, protect, support, defend, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the state in which they reside. Isn't that right?
What does this oath mean? If you want to look at the way our politicians behave these days, it doesn't mean a thing.
[laughter]
I mean it. When was the last time somebody got up in front of the people of this country, debating a great issue, and talked about the impact that a given action was going to have on our capacity for self-government? When was the last time they spoke about the impact a given action would have on the integrity of our sovereignty as a people?
And yet, self-government and the sovereignty of the people are the essence of what it means to be a republic. And the preservation of our republic is not just a nice idea. It's actually, under Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution, a constitutional obligation of the federal government in particular.
So, if we don't pass on the republican form of government, we have violated our obligation to the future, we have destroyed the legacy that we are supposed to hand on to our posterity.
And yet, at every turn in this society, we are doing just that. What we have just illustrated with Roe vs. Wade is a shift, a fundamental shift of power. We have allowed the sovereignty of the people, as exercised through their representative legislatures, to be usurped by unelected judges who now purport to lift up or tear down or otherwise dictate the contents of the law. The separation of powers isn't even a fiction anymore, because the judiciary has claimed to itself the ultimate legislative prerogative.
And they are doing it at the state level; they are doing it at the federal level; they are doing it at every level. And every time they do it, they strike another blow against the republican government in this country. They strike another blow, destructive of the sovereignty of the people of this country. They destroy another element of the legacy we are to hand on to our children.
They have done it systematically in their decisions on abortion. They have done it systematically on decisions that have regard to the conscience and moral life of our people.
You and I both know that down through the history of humanity, it has been the most important political issue.
I know there are lots of people who would like to write their tomes now and pretend that it was all about money and materialism. That's not true. Most of the great wars in human history were not fought over money and materialism, contrary to the lies a lot of revisionist historians like to tell us. Most of the great wars in human history were fought over what's right and what's wrong; who is God, and who is not; the issues of justice, the issues of conscience, and the issues of faith.
And these are the issues that even in our time represent the cause of our struggles, and the root of those things which are paramount in our world today.
What is the war against terror? Is it a war over financial this's and thats? It's a war that's essentially being financed by a bunch of folks who are getting all their power and wealth out of the ground in oil mines, against countries that are deriving their power and wealth from industrial production and technological and scientific sophistication. There's money on all sides. It's not a fight about economics. It's not a fight over financial this's and thats.
The president of Iran was quite clear on it the other day. He wrote a letter to the President which, sadly, I think hasn't been answered yet--I hope they will--in which his claim was that what he called "liberal democracy," the system of self-government and constitutionalism based upon the full participation of the people, that it has failed, that it is corrupt and it leads to corruption and destruction and immorality. He swung down the gauntlet to say that all our way of life is indecent and immoral and unjust, and that is why it must be destroyed.
The war against terror, when we analyze it, is what? A war about whether it is legitimate to use violence against the innocent in order to achieve your political purposes.
Ratify that as a legitimate instrument of political and governmental life, and you have ratified the principle that has been throughout the centuries of human existence at the heart of every despotism, at the heart of every tyranny, at the heart of every regime of oppression that has ever existed on the face of the earth.
The fight against terror is not just a fight against some group of ideologically- or religiously-driven thugs. It is a fight against the very principle of evil that this nation was founded to refuse. And that principle is not a principle of money and materialism. It's a principle of justice and conscience, of decency and right. That's what we fight for.
[applause]
But if that's true, that these are in fact the most important issues, that they are the issues of life and death that ultimately confront us with the most powerful and important causes for war and for the defense of our liberty, don't you think that it's really important that those kinds of decisions should be reflected in a government that's based on consent, that they should be made by rules that respect the very principle on which our government is based?
Think about it, my friends. Whether it's abortion, or whether it's traditional marriage, whether it's respect for the obligations of parenting and family life--all of these moral issues that are now on the table are paramount. Who's claiming to decide those issues in our country today?
The courts are claiming that they decide them. Courts who are elected by nobody, courts who are ultimately responsible, they claim, to nobody have taken the right to make the most important life-and-death decisions of right and conscience out of the hands of the people, to be made by a little oligarchy--a high priesthood of the legal profession who purport to tell us now that they are the arbiters of our Constitution, and that we have no right to read and understand that document on our own.
That's exactly why they get away with the things they do. They get away, in fact, with pulling the rug out from under the very foundation of moral life, which is our respect for Almighty God, right there in the first principle of our liberty: all are created equal, endowed by their Creator.
No Creator, no liberty; no Creator, no rights; no Creator, no justice; no Creator, no government by consent; no Creator, no republic.
And yet, what are we told by our courts? We are told again, and again, and again, by every means that the people have no right to honor God, have no right even to mention His name!
When are we going to wake up? Our whole claim to rights is based on an appeal to God, and we are now told by the courts that we can't even mention His name--what happens to our claim to rights when we can no longer appeal to the authority of God when we assert, and claim, and demand, and fight for those rights?
Heart fails, conscience fails, courage fails, because we are pushed again into the darkness of submission and ignorance and subservience that blasted the hopes of millions of human beings down through all the centuries of human oppression.
And yet, the courts have gotten away with this. Why? Well, they tell us, "Separation of church and state is required by the Constitution."
One of the things you can do, thankfully, because we have a Constitution--the advantage of having a written Constitution, as I often try to remind people, is what?--you can read it! Oh, boy!
[laughter]
No, that's very good. You know, being able to read it yourself means you don't have to look to the judge. If the judges say, "This is what it says," you can go look!
The judges say the Constitution requires separation of church and state. I'm sure all of you have gone and taken a look. If you go through it from top to bottom, from one end to the other--it's a brilliant document, as exemplified by the fact that, even though it has established one of the most powerful, successful governments in the world, it is the shortest constitution ever written, probably. And so, it doesn't take long to get through it!
You don't even have to take an afternoon to get through the U.S. Constitution. You could probably do it in couple of hours--if you're a speed reader, it could take you forty-five minutes or less. Go all through the Constitution, if you look at it sideways, backwards and forwards, guess what you won't find mentioned in the Constitution, at all, anywhere? Separation of church and state.
Then where do they get this? Well, they tell us that they get it from the First Amendment. So, I looked it up, and what does it say? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
And then they say, "Ah! There it is! Can't establish religion!"
Is that what those words say? Let's go back and look.
"Congress shall make no law. . . ."
That's pretty easy, "Congress." That's that body we send people to, and then, except for Bill Sali and people like him, they forget where they come from.
[laughter]
"Congress shall make. . . ."
"Shall make" is pretty easy. You know, make, produce, fabricate.
"No. . . ."
Now, that's a hard one.
[laughter]
It is! It is! How many people here have raised kids? Raise your hands.
[laughter]
You know how hard that is. I had a seventeen-year-old son who still didn't understand the meaning of that word.
[laughter]
But, truth of the matter is, though, I am confident that once he gets a job . . .
[laughter]
. . . And he's confronted with that word coming from the mouth of the guy who signs his paychecks, he will probably improve his understanding wonderfully.
[laughter]
So, most of us will arrive at an understanding of the word "no" at some point along the way, don't we? It's not that hard.
"Congress shall make no law. . . ."
Laws: the rules that the representatives of the people are supposed to make.
"Respecting. . . ."
Well, that could be a hard one, except that it isn't. There's only been one meaning throughout our history. The word "respecting" means, simply, "concerning, with regard to, on the subject of."
"An establishment of religion. . . ."
That could require some historical this's and thats, but we don't even have to know what that is. Do you realize we could understand the meaning of that first phrase of the Constitution if you just put parenthesis around "establishment of religion," and wrote "X" instead?
"Congress shall make no law respecting (X)."
Does that mean that "X" cannot exist in America? No, that's not what the words say! The words say only this, that Congress, the lawmaking body for the federal government, cannot legislate on the subject of or anything that has to do with "X."
Now, someone needs to explain to me how, out of those words, the federal courts that are supposedly governed by the Constitution get the notion that they have the right to do what those words say no part of the federal government can do?
They are part of the federal government, aren't they? Congress does make the laws that establish the authority of the federal government, don't they?
The only way that [the courts] could get any [authority to rule on religious questions] is if some part of the Constitution gave it to them. And we know that the Constitution doesn't.
Now, I know there are those shrewd lawyers who [say otherwise]. But the 14th Amendment doesn't, because it says that the states have to respect all persons' constitutional rights, and you can't deprive anyone of due process. Nevertheless, they use that to argue that all of the rights of the first ten amendments have to be applied to the individual states, and therefore they can dictate to the states about these things.
Here's the problem with that, though. For a moment, let's grant--in a general sort of way, I don't necessarily, but let's grant--that that 14th Amendment argument is valid. It simply means that the rights established by the first ten amendments must be respected by the states.
But in this particular case, when you talk about rights and privileges and immunities, what's established in the first ten amendments, step number one, is immunity from federal legislation on the issue of religious establishment (since it's not supposed to exist); and step number two, the 10th Amendment says that any power not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the states is reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
So, according to the first ten amendments, the right to deal, the power to deal with the issues involved in religious establishment does not belong to the federal government, does not belong to the federal courts, it belongs to the states and to the people of this country! How did the judges get their hands on it, on the federal bench?
[applause]
Now, I go through all of this like this because we've got to understand, what I have just walked you through is the way in which the courts stole from us the way to see our consent as the basis for decisions that are taken about morality, about conscience, about piety. All these decisions will now be made, regardless of our consent, by a handful of judges.
That's not a republic. That's oligarchic oppression--rule by the few, without regard to the consent of the people.
[applause starts]
And if you understand what I just told you--don't applaud, because it's so sad. What I have just told you is that our republic has already been overthrown, that our sovereignty has already been taken from our hands! And if we don't do something about it, this game is already over.
Now, one last illustration of this. One of the most salient issues right now is immigration. I would actually want to amend that to what I believe is the proper way to talk about this: one of the most salient issues, of course, right now is border security.
But let's think about that for a minute.
We are confronted by an issue where, every time I've looked at anything that they've polled, and done this, and done that, and done another thing, put aside all their ins and outs of what we might or might not do with the 12 million folks who have already gotten in through our borders, the one thing we all can seem to agree on is that we ought to close the back door. "Somebody hit the back door up, and go lock it!"
[laughter]
"We're not sleeping very well at nights, with that door open! There's a draft in here!"
[laughter]
And so, there's a great opinion amongst the American people that we ought to have secure borders.
Duh!
[laughter]
It's not an agreement that's shared by our leaders. You know, I have great respect for most of these leaders, like President G.W. Bush. But I must confess that when I looked at him the other night, I was kind of shocked. Because, there he was, looking the American people in the eye and saying we do not have full control of our borders.
I was sitting there thinking to myself, "We do not have full control of our borders?" I was not elected president. You were elected president!
[laughter]
I think it would have been better if he had said, "I do not have full control of our borders; my administration does not have it; the federal government, under my leadership does not have it."
But if he had said that, it would have been pretty clear that what he was telling us was that, six years into his term of office, he hadn't been doing his job. Most presidents aren't going to tell you this straight in the front. But that's what he was saying. He apparently didn't realize that's what he was admitting, but he was.
If this was the day after you elected him, a month after you elected him, even five months after you elected him, I could still think he's talking about a failure of his predecessor.
Six years, almost, into somebody's term, you don't turn to the American people and say, "I haven't been doing my job," unless you're willing to give them an explanation. I should would like to know why not--and I think most people in this country would like to know why not.
We are a reasonably forgiving people, but an explanation does help.
What could possibly be the explanation? But what's even worse, without even looking for an explanation of why they haven't been doing their jobs, you have to consider what it is that they consider to be the top priority.
All the folks around the country say, "Shut the doors! Make sure that we don't aggravate this problem further, and then worry about it." It's pretty logical, actually, I think.
Now, let's say your basement's flooded. What's the first thing you do? Figure out a strategy for bailing out the water?
[laughter]
No! I remember one of the most famous dictums of my original life in diplomacy, was something that I picked up when I was in orientation when I was with the State Department. And the guy who was in charge of the orientation was often fond of telling all kinds of stories, and so forth. He told us a story one night about his tenure, and what he'd been doing when he got into so much trouble with the government, because he had said something and then he kept going back and tried to correct it, and made a mess.
And after he told us this story, he looks us in the eye and said something that all of you probably already know: "When you've found that you have dug yourself into a hole, what is the first thing that you ought to do?"
"Stop digging!"
[laughter]
Would somebody write this on a little piece of paper, stuff it in a bottle, and send it to the folks in Washington, D.C.? "You have dug us into a hole, with respect to the security of our borders. Would you kindly stop digging? And shut the door?"
[laughter, applause]
Why is this hard to understand?
And don't come to me talking about what should we do with the water, and how should we bail it out, and can we purify it, and what shall we do to subvert it, and all this stuff. Let's not talk about that just yet, because we're still about to drown if you don't turn the spigot.
[laughter]
I think most people in this country get that. Now, I don't mean to speak uncharitably of the President, but I think it's time that he and the leaders in the Senate also got that little tiny paper understood.
And that's without prejudice, by the way, to what may or may not happen, once the door is shut, and we feel confident that we're in control. But the great problem is that if we don't get control of the borders, does anybody here believe that anything they put in legislation means anything?
I would ask the President to consult his Secret Service folks for some common sense on that. When they're going to take him anywhere, like if they were going to bring him into this room or into this building, what's the first thing that they're going to make absolutely sure they do before they even have the roster of who can get in and who can't get in, and what insignia they will use, and how you identify them, and how you clear them? What's the first thing you've got to do? You want to establish a secure perimeter and make sure you control who gets in, who's going out. Right?
That's common sense. I wish we'd talk to them, because I think it's common sense for the country, too. If we want immigration laws that are effective, we must have control of our borders, so that the only people who come in come in on the terms of our law.
[applause]
If you argue about the terms before you secure the border, I suspect you're lying to us. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Leaders with the track record our leaders have right now had better not expect us to "trust them" when they tell us they're really serious about border security. I don't trust them one bit, and I don't think anybody else will.
In this particular case, "by their fruits, ye shall know them," and if the fruits are millions more illegal immigrants, then we're not going to know our leaders anymore.
But the truth of the matter is, that's one of the issues that's a reflection of the will of our people. If the folks who are sitting in the legislatures and in congress actually start moving in response to the [pro-illegal immigration] marchers in the streets and all this sort of stuff, what does that say about the sovereignty of our people? When the folks who are elected to be our representatives no longer need us, no longer serve us, and no longer protect us at the most fundamental level, which is the integrity of our perimeter, what does it say about our sovereignty? Because, if they're not serving us, who are they serving? If they're not representing us, who are they representing?
See, I think we're in the midst of a great crisis, and it's far gone already. We shouldn't be thinking about who we're going to send to Washington to go [unintelligible] this issue. We need to think about who we shall send to Washington to join with those who mean to save this republic while we can.
And that's why I'm here tonight: in order to have somebody who's going to join with the right forces, who's not going to be pushed off of it because this or that interest wants to put money into his political coffers, because this or that one was offered some political favors; in order to find the heart and the spirit and the conscience that will not be moved by his own ambition but instead will hold fast to the real goal, which is to serve and secure the Constitution and the liberty of our people; in order to find somebody like that, you can't listen to the words, you can't listen to the speeches alone, you have got to look at the life.
And that's why it's so all-important, as people are deciding here, to go over the track record. Who has been willing to stand for life before anybody else said it was popular? Who was willing to be there? Who was willing to take a stand? Who was willing to take the risk of going out front to establish the terms on which the people of this state would deal with this issue of conscience? And who did it, not once, not twice, but every single year throughout their career of service to the people of Idaho?
That's the person. And by their fruits, ye shall know them--folks who are willing to stand fast to a real concept of self-government.
Think about taxes for a moment. Some think it's all about money, and so forth. No, it's not. People who think taxes are only about money don't understand the nature of power. Our Founders did. In the dictum that they repeated over and over again in their writings, they quoted Blackstone, "the power to tax is the power to destroy."
That means if you abuse the tax code, you're not just taking people's money, you are destroying their means of power--destroying their capacity to take care of their families; destroying their capacity to support their churches and their civic groups; destroying their capacity to put together the political associations that will promote the things that they believe are necessary for their community and their society.
If you take the taxing power, and encroach upon it, and take more, and more, and more of the resources of the people, then you reach a certain point where the people who are supposed to control the government instead are a people controlled by the government, because the government dictates how much of their resources they shall keep in their pockets.
And that's where we are today. We have already accepted a pervasive tax system, and the reason the politicians talk all the time as if, when they give us a tax cut, they're doing us a big favor, is because under the current tax system, that's exactly true.
You know, if I grant to the government the power to tax my income, and I leave at their discretion the percentage they can tax, who has control of my income? They do. What's to stop them from setting it at 100%? Only a momentary prudence--and the moment they get past that point, they'll take it, any time they think they can get away with it.
And every year, we docilely send the signal they can get away with more and more--and they have, and they will.
To stand against that, what do you need? You need somebody who understands that you're not just talking about money, you're talking about sovereignty; you're not just talking about money, you're talking about liberty; you're not just talking about money, you're talking about the ability of a people to conserve its strength, to defend its conscience, to build up its institutions of conscience in its churches and its synagogues, and to stand where a people must stand: on grounds independent of the government's power over them!
And that is why, year after year, time after time, somebody like Bill Sali will stand up, understanding in his heart that it's not just about money, it's about the liberty of the people of this state, and it will be about the liberty of the American people.
[applause]
We desperately need this kind of courage in Washington--and we need it, not just in words, but in the consistent commitment of heart, mind, life, and deed that Bill has already exemplified.
It is, I know, a rare thing when you find that kind of consistency in politics. But when you do, remember: all of us will get down on our knees, we'll pray for the President, pray for the country, we'll pray for God's blessing down on America, but let's not be so silly that we can't take "yes" for an answer, and that when he puts before us somebody who exactly fits the time and need, we don't have the sense to rally around, not an individual, but what he represents--not just a person, but the principles of truth and integrity, of piety and self-government, of God's fierce justice that he represents.
Cast a vote in that fashion. You are fulfilling that deep obligation which is there in our Constitution, but which I hope is still there in our hearts, that which bids you to work not just for ourselves, but for our posterity; to work not just for ourselves, but for the dignity, the virtue, the conscience, the faith, the happiness of those we have seen and the children we have raised, and those we shall never see, but who will live, as the Israelites did, in a promised land that Moses never saw, in a promised land that we helped to make possible, which is the future of our great county.
I think that future hinges on what the people of Idaho decide to do in this election. It's always the case to certain extent, but if you've been hearing what I've said tonight, then you know that we live now in a time when, like never before, the decisions we take in politics are decisions we take for the whole republic, for the whole future of our freedom.
I pray God that you won't make that decision lightly--and that, more than that, you will commit yourself in prayer, and with money, and with heart, and with labor, to work so that your fellow citizens will rise up and join you in that decision, committing to the kind of work that will make it clear that whatever the gloom may seem today, yet the darkness will be dispelled by the fire of our enthusiasm, of our energy, of our faith, of our commitment to God and to our county.
As we live that commitment, the sword shall not bear, and Bill's victory shall but be the first step in a victory for all Americans.
God bless you.
[applause]