Alan Keyes

America is in Crisis

Speech in Kansas City, Missouri

April 25, 2008

America is in crisis.

The word “crisis” means a time of decision, but it has come to mean also a time fraught with danger.  And what is in crisis in this nation is, in fact, the great republic that was founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and that used as the instrument of the sovereignty of the people, erected upon those principles, the Constitution of the United States.

On every front, sadly, that republic is under assault, and in many areas it has already succumbed.

I therefore stand before you today in a moment of great urgency, in a moment when, if we assume that this so-called game of our politics is what it appears to be, merely another competition of ambition and vanity, then we shall fail our nation, we shall fail our liberty, and we shall fail our Almighty God.

I believe deeply that we have reached a point in our republic’s life when we must above all things return the people of this nation to a decent respect for the principles on which it was founded.

[Audience: Applause.]

Wait.  Wait.  Before we applaud, we must remember what those principles entail.  For, the greatest of them—stated in our Declaration as our founders justified their decision to go to war against the British in the name of liberty—was the principle that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

Now, why is that principle so important?  Because it epitomizes the very meaning of the word “principle.” 

That word is thrown around a good deal in many circles these days, but I sometimes think people forget its true origin and meaning.  The word “principle” comes from the word princeps, related to the word “prince.”  It means “the first one,” “the first things.”  And it refers, in the end, to this truth: that you cannot think of principle except you think of the One Who set the stars in place and brings the mountains up.  You cannot think of principle except you think of the One Who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One Who, with His words, set the whole universe in motion.  For, the very Principle of all principles is the authority of Almighty God!

I know that I shall be chided.  Here I am, standing before a political convention.  They will say, “Who do you think you are, a preacher?”  No, I am an American. 

I am an American who remembers that we are a free people, a sovereign people, but that we claim that freedom and we derive that sovereignty not from our power, not from our weapons, not from our economic might, not from our so-called great position of preeminence in the world—we derive that liberty from our appeal to the authority of Almighty God.

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

But what does that mean?  I think that, though people don’t always see it, every crisis we face right now is derived from the fact that, sadly, though we derive our freedom from an appeal to God, we have in every area turned our back on His authority.

The issue that epitomizes that, above all, is the issue that, above all, is the issue of principle that faces our people today: and that is the issue whereon we have explicitly rejected the founding authority of Almighty God in order to declare the lie that it can be right to take the life of an innocent child in the womb.

I know there are folks who think that we have things far more important to consider, but I would tell you that by turning our backs on the authority of God that protects the innocent life in the womb, by turning our backs on the authority of God that guarantees to that child, as to you and me, the unalienable right to life, we have rejected the authority of God which protects the child, so we have rejected the authority of God from which we derive our right to govern ourselves as a people.

The source of all the threats to our sovereignty is not the material threat.  It is not the economic threat.  It is not the institutional threat.  The source of all the threats to our liberty is the threat that has been planted and grown up in our very soul, our very heart, our very spirit—for, you cannot sustain a liberty that is based on God’s authority when you refuse to recognize that authority as the discipline that must control your use of that freedom.

In addition to that, of course, by turning our back on the child, we have broken the bond that ought to bind parent to child.  We have created a crisis in the family, a collapse of that family institution, which then leads to a rising problem.  The quality of education must collapse when the family no longer does its job as the prime educator of our children.  The family is the creator of that moral environment without which education must fail, however much money we spend upon it.

And once we have allowed the collapse of that family, the very engine of our economic life will also collapse, and we will produce problems of crime, of violence, of poverty, and we’ll chase the tail of those problems with a sky-rocketing budget with promises from our politicians that they will save the day—but sadly nothing can save our day when we have abandoned the truth that makes us free.

So, I think that the first priority is to address these moral issues, and then to address the assault against our sovereignty that has arisen from it.  The collapse of moral sovereignty, that denies to us the right to take care of ourselves and our families, that undermines parental authority, and that leads us down the road of ever-increasing government dictation and despotism over our individual social and economic lives. 

We must address the issue of constitutional sovereignty, where the courts have used an abusive power never granted to them by the Constitution of the United States to assault our allegiance to God, to assault our faith, and therefore to assault the very foundations of our claim to be the sovereign people of this country.

The first priority of restoring that institutional sovereignty must be to declare, once and for all, by appointments but also by every other means, including impeachment, that the judges have no right to usurp the power of our legislatures to make the laws that govern this country.

But see, why hasn’t that been done?  Because our Constitution, which established proper mechanisms for keeping the judges in line has not been respected. 

Now, we say that it hasn’t been respected because some folks don’t read it, and some folks don’t know it, and some folks don’t understand it.  Maybe that’s true to a certain extent, but I’ve got to tell you, I think some of them have read it, they know it, they understand it, they willfully disregard it because they no longer have allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.

We must elect to every legislative body those who understand that one of the prime requisites of all representation in this country is to represent the sacredness of that oath which requires that we uphold, protect, and defend the constitutions that place the sovereign power in the hands of the people, through the hands of their representatives, and that rebuke everyone who will take that sovereign power out of our hands.

But that gets me back to the moral problem, because, you see, though we sometimes fail to reason it out, you are not going to get people to assert defense of your sovereignty if they don’t have the courage to do it—if they are not willing to take the political risks that are necessary, if they are not willing to stand up and stand in the winds of criticism and media rebuke in order to assert the simple truths that make us free.

The lack of courage is the lack of a moral virtue.

In America, that courage has been exemplified in every generation, not because in pagan fashion, people find some physical resource in their ambition and in their fealty of pride to themselves.  No.  That courage has come in every generation to ordinary people of every background and persuasion, because they have gained the strength to stand in the face of injustice by understanding that within them, it is not only this mortal heart of our humanity, but, if they will allow it, the sacred heart of our Lord.

I know, rebuke me again: “How dare you raise Christianity?”  But I’ll tell you something: it is Christianity that introduced us to the truth that the principle of all creation, the master of all government can be for us an indwelling principle that governs our choice, that governs our sovereign conscience, that governs our will because he has become the heart of our lives as we opened the doors of our heart in faith.

I think that it is time we stopped being ashamed of that which is the great resource of courage in our society: that we stand forward and understand that, yes, we may appeal to God, and, yes, we may live out the heart of Jesus that calls us with courage to stand fast for that liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.

And if we rebuke this, then we forget that without that courage, we cannot sustain our freedom. 

But in addition to the institutional challenges exemplified by abusive judges, we now have that challenge to our sovereignty which seeks to destroy the very physical existence of our nation.  Why would I say this?  Well, if you don’t know where your borders are, you don’t know where your nation is.

They may pretend that this is just some question of immigration, but the American people have no fear of immigration.  We have no reluctance to entertain and welcome people from all parts of the world.  We started as a nation of thirteen colonies that may have represented a cross-section of northern Europe, and maybe a little bit of Africa from the forced immigration of those enslaved.  But you realize that we have grown in the interim to a nation of nations, that has drawn from every race and color and creed and kind people who come from all over the world.  We didn’t have to invite the United Nations on our soil, when we have built a nation of nations on the basis of the Constitution of the United States.

We are a people that understands that once you have dedicated yourself to the appeal of God’s justice and His will for human dignity, people will come.  They will long to share in this society of hope and aspiration and justice that can be built upon that solid ground.

So we have no fear of immigration.  What we do oppose, however, is an elite that, for the sake of corporate interest and profit, that for the sake of ideologies that seek to establish trans-national institutions that will substitute for our sovereignty, substitute for our Constitution, and destroy our way of life, that for the sake of those ambitions, will neglect the control, will neglect the security of our borders, so that our very identity will be physically erased from the face of the earth.  To this we will say no, and we will dedicate ourselves to bringing it to an end!

And some folks will say, “Well, how are we going to handle this?”  But look, y’all.  Don’t let’s pretend that this problem arises because we don’t have the means, we don’t have the manpower.  This is a lie.  If we have the will, then we easily bring these borders under control.  We will put together the border guard in sufficient numbers to do the job.  We will apply the technology that in sufficient sophistication we already have.  And we will harness the will of our citizens to stand forward and volunteer, as they already have done, in order to join in the force that is needed to get the job done.

But wait.  Why is this will absent?  Because of elites who have betrayed us.  Because one party—the Democrat Party—has dedicated itself to government socialism, and now after long years of rhetoric which they have betrayed now with their every act and with every nomination practically, a Republican Party that in the nomination of John McCain has ripped the mask off their professed allegiance to the Constitution and limited government and the republic by nominating a man who, in every stance that he has taken stands against the sovereignty of the people, the security of our borders, the need for judges who will respect the Constitution, he has betrayed every value on which this nation as a nation of a free people must stand.

And so, both these parties now are controlled by the same force.  Government socialism, corporate socialism—I don’t care what face you put upon it, it is the face of despotism, the face of tyranny, the face that means the loss of our sovereignty and our freedom, and we must reject them both!

Now, I’m not the only one saying that.  There are millions of people in this country looking for a home.  And this brings me to another point.  This is a year, believe me, in which a third party could win the presidency of the United States.

[Audience:  “Yes, sir.”  Applause.]

No, wait.  Wait.  You all settle back now, because I am renowned for saying in my speeches things people don’t always want to hear.  I’ve gotten to now that part of this speech.  Because, see, I don’t believe in leadership that tickles your ears with what you want to hear and ignores what you need to hear.

For, yes, we could move forward in a pharisaical spirit that writes down in all kinds of cribbed words and language words that we claim correspond to liberty and to the Constitution, and then we will act like them and demand some ritual observance of those words.  But I have learned from my Lord that it is not the ritual observance and recitation of the words, but the spiritual observance of the word that makes for true observance of the spirit, whether of faith or of liberty.

And I will tell you.  The party that is going to answer the deep yearning of the American people is going to be a party that will speak with integrity of the reality that we face in the world—not what we want to be the case, not what we can promise to gain money and support, but what we can achieve, realistically, in order to secure this country, preserve its liberty, and build strongly upon its Constitution.

When we start to say and do things that represent promises we can’t keep, we are doing what all politicians do: lying so we can get power. 

Now, I will be specific.  People are always asking me about the United Nations, and should we get out, and declare we should get out.  As a goal, I think it could be embraced.  As a fact, however, read the Constitution: all the treaties properly passed pursuant to the arrangements in the Constitution are declared by its words to be the “supreme law of the land.”

If I stand before you and say, “The instant I become president, we are out of the United Nations,” I will be lying, because the President of the United States is bound by the supreme law of the land. 

That means that you may have the goal, and you may develop a strategy, and you may find a way, but if you make the promise to do it, Monday you’re in and Tuesday they’re gone, you are not telling the people the truth. 

And if you begin a campaign by telling people untruths, don’t tell me you act with the spirit of integrity.  The walk that walks the walk must be a walk that respects unalienable rights, individual liberty, debate.  The party must conduct itself in a way that corresponds to the very liberty it promises: no despotism, no dictatorship, no closing of the door against new ideas and discussion. 

There must be a vigorous, manly debate of all new ideas, of all discussion, so that we can do what the founders did, testing ourselves against the truth, of reason, and God’s will, come to a conclusion that is not just good for us and our ambition and for our party, even, but for our nation, and that will satisfy our God.

I think if we stand in this way with integrity, people will come to us because they long for such a party, not as a party, but as one that stands upon the strong ground of American principle and American hope.

Barack Obama talks always about “hope, hope, hope,” but it’s empty.  It’s just a word.  It’s gibberish.  We have a hope in America.  It is a hope that has been filled with the blood of our patriots, that has been fought for on the battlefields of our freedom.  It is the hope that was the last and is the last best hope, not just of our nation, but of all humankind gathered in spirit—in the spirit of liberty that we represent.

If we will return to the true principles of that liberty, if we will represent them in our spirit, in our law, in our means, in our candidates, then I believe we could be the party that answers this deep longing of the American soul, and that answers it not as some have said in ten years and twelve years, for the answer to this crisis is needed now.

And we must raise the banner of this liberty with the name of liberty and the name of God unashamedly writ upon that banner, so that this word “constitution” will come again to mean what it has meant to every generation of Americans: a promise of liberty, a promise of hope, a promise that we shall spread the word of God’s true offer of mercy, not just to ourselves and to our children, but to every nation that we represent and to every people whose hope we hold up on high in the example of this shining city of hope that, by our renewed dedication to the principle of liberty that is God’s will, we will make the living hope of the future for our people and for all mankind.

God bless you.