To make a tax-deductible contribution supporting our educational programs, please contact:
Declaration Foundation P.O. Box 1310 Herndon, VA 20172-1310
"We have just begun the fight!"
Keyes rallies troops for the long haul
August 30, 2003
In a rousing call to action at a rally / press conference held on the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Dr. Alan Keyes exhorted 2000 enthusiastic supporters of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in these simple words:
"We have just begun the fight!"
The ringing exhortation, issued with reverberating emphasis near the end of Keyes' remarks at noon Thursday, Aug. 28, drew thunderous applause.
It was impossible, under the circumstances, not to draw a parallel between King's defining speech in 1963 and Keyes' rallying cry that defined exactly what is in store for those who oppose the removal of a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building, which occurred Wednesday.
Keyes' speech--clearly intended to set to rest any notion that removal of the monument signaled an end to the constitutional crisis surrounding it--was one of Keyes' most memorable.
Among the statements made by Keyes:
"To all of those who, in the face of this present situation, have been confused, have been in the dark, have been doubtful, have made their reverence for law the enemy of their reverence for God, I wish to say to them all: the Constitution does no such thing."
"According to Constitution of the United States, the jurisdiction, the power to make judgments about the extent, the nature, the presence, or absence of religious expressions and reverence for God is left by that document, not in the hands of an unelected clique of judges, but in the hands of the states, and the people of the states!"
"The courts have been in the business of drawing the Constitution into their obscure precincts, and they have been mumbling over the document their incantations of obscure legalism. And we are to believe that as a result of that wonderful power of incantation, they have taken a document that forbids this subject to the federal government, and handed to federal judges the power to dictate it to the entire nation!
"Well, today we are in the position of those who have watched the magic trick like this for fifty years. But those arts of evil magic are now undone, because we can explain this magician's trick! We can see past these mumbled incantations!"
"According to the First and Tenth Amendments, one of the privileges of our citizenship was to be immune from federal dictation, when it comes to the issue of religious establishment!"
"I know that there are some who believe that the whole purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to establish an all-powerful national government, but you look at the document, and you will see that they are wrong. In the change of government that occurred at the Revolution, as Hamilton notes in the Federalist Papers, the states, in and of themselves, surrendered no rights or obligations merely as a result of that change of government. They surrendered only those specified in the Constitution, and as specified in the Constitution, they kept all the rest.
"Among those is the right of the people to determine, in and through their state institutions, how they will show their piety, how they will reverence and honor the God who made us free."
"Contrary to what some suggest, this is not the end of a battle. We understand, contrary to what the media would like to believe, that as we have come and shall come to Montgomery to be a living monument to the right of the people to reverence God according to their will in their states, as we have gathered and shall gather, so they must know that we are not defeated. We have just begun the fight!"
At one point in his extemporaneous remarks, Keyes compared the curtailing of the federal courts' usurpation to the cutting of the "Gordian knot." In Greek legend, the first person to untie the "Gordian knot" (a knot tied around a cart) would become the next king of Asia. The knot was a trick knot--possibly fused at both ends--that frustrated all attempts to untie it. It was finally undone in 333 B.C., when Alexander the Great simply cut the rope with his sword.
Said Keyes,
"We can cut the Gordian knot! And even as one man has stood up in this state, and with his courage, and with his integrity, and with his humble willingness to serve the piety and respect that he has shown all his life for Almighty God--as one man has made that difference which creates the opportunity for us to see the truth, so with one stroke we can cut through the Gordian knot of court usurpation and obfuscation, and restore in one clean move the right of the people of this country."
Click here for the entire speech. (Audio and transcript available.)
