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Speech
A God & Country Day Address
Alan Keyes
November 5, 2006
Crossroad Baptist Church, Pensacola, Florida

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Praise God. Thank you. Good morning.

With that wonderful welcome, I'm reminded of someone who once told me that giving a speech is a little bit like battle. It's one thing, who's standing before, but the question is, who'll be standing afterwards? (laughter) And we'll see today, because it's not entirely clear to me that what I have to say today will seem very cheering or inspiring, because I actually think we're at a time in our nation's life when we need to face some somber facts.

But before I get into all of that, I would like to know a little something about the audience here, so I'm gonna ask you all some embarrassing questions. If you don't feel like giving me this information, treat it as one of those questionnaires where you just sit tight and say, "none of the above."

But, let me see--just to start out with, how many people here would call themselves Democrats? Stand up. Any Democrats here? Now, don't be ashamed--stand up! Let me see it. Okay. Have a seat.

How many people here would call themselves Republicans? Please stand up. Let me see. Okay, we have a few Republicans. Okay, sit down.

How many people would call themselves--let's see--Constitutionists? Constitution Party. Anybody here? We have a few of those.

How many folks are Independents? Independents. Have a few of those.

How many folks would be of some other persuasion I haven't thought of? Politically, I mean. But see, that's interesting.

Now, what I have to ask all of you for the next few minutes is that, however you responded to those questions, I want you to put them aside because, in point of fact, the next question I ask you ought to trump them all.

How many people here would describe themselves as Christians? Stand up.

See, I thought that would get most folks here on their feet. See, now, if I were to do a survey here and ask you which of the labels that I just asked you to acknowledge is most important to you, how many people here would say the Christian life was the most important? Raise your hands!

Okay, keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. How many people here would be lying?

(laughter)

See, I don't know. I didn't expect that. Please have a seat.

Why would I say that? That's a harsh thing to say. Well, the reason I say that is because you go down the roster of things that are going on in America today, and you find out where some of these folks stand, wearing these party labels, and you compare what they say, and what they do, and how they vote, with what you think Jesus Christ would say and do, and how He would vote, and you tell me whether you could, in good conscience, cast your vote for any of them.

(applause)

'Cause I don't know sometimes, and I'm a good, solid Republican. I've been Republican through thick and thin. I've been Republican when they treated me well, and Republican when they treated me badly. But I'll tell you something. One of the reasons they sometimes treat me badly is because, before I was a Republican, I belonged to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I still do.

(applause)

And that's going to be true long after it won't matter whether I was Republican, Democrat, or even a human being. 'Cause in the long scheme of things, all these other things will drop away, but the Lord--He will never, never drop away. He shall be, as it were, the clothing that we wear, if we have indeed worn His Name in truth, for all eternity.

But what I want to address today are two things. How many of us really think and vote as if that were true, and how many of us don't? I have a simple equation. I'm going to embarrass some people for a minute here, but I can't help it, because I've got to speak the truth when I can.

I will go down--if you go down a certain list of issues, here--let's start with the issue of the definition of marriage. What did Christ say marriage was? "For this reason doth a man leave his mother and father, and cleave to his (audience calls out: "wife") wife, and the two become (audience calls out: "one flesh") one flesh." So Christ understood, by marriage, that the two become one flesh. Right?

At what point in the relationship between a man and a woman do the two become one flesh? No, they're not one flesh in marriage! No, no, no, no--I'm sorry. They stand up, they're separate bodies. They take vows and they stand before us--they're still separate bodies. Last time I looked, those bodies remain separate. They may join in spirit. They may join in love. They may join in Christ. They may join before God. Their bodies do not become one body when they get married.

At what point do the two become one flesh? When? "The child," somebody said. Right on! See? That's the only time that the two, in fact, become--see, we thought Christ was speaking metaphorically. He was not. In marriage, the two become one flesh, but that means that marriage does not exist until it is, in the act of procreation and in the fruit of that act, finally consummated. All the other things are, as it were, the trappings of marriage, the commitment to marriage, the institutionalization of marriage, but the marriage itself--according to Our Lord Jesus Christ--takes place when the child is conceived. Think about that.

This used to be taken quite seriously, so that at the end of the day, if a marriage had not been consummated, it could still be sundered. See? That was how seriously it was taken at one point in our Christian heritage, because people looked at the words of Christ and were instructed by them to see the truth. And isn't it wonderful, how Christ's words--at the time He spoke them, did folks know about DNA and all that? Did they know that someday we would be able absolutely to verify that the essential physical attributes of mother and father were united in the child?

They didn't know it then. Their science didn't tell it to them. But the Lord told it to us. He gave us the moral guidance, long before we had the scientific affirmation, and that moral guidance told us the truth that the two in fact do become one flesh and that, in physical terms--in terms of that physical body--the code, as it were, that represents the physical body of the male and the code that represents the physical body of the female are united into a new and unique combination in each and every child that they have. In the literal sense of the words, "the two become one flesh."

Now, if that's the understanding of marriage that Our Lord articulated--and we do believe that the Lord spoke the truth, right? And that His words are, for us, a guide for our living, right? Okay. With that in mind, then His definition of marriage would be serious for us, yes? So, if Christ says that marriage is where the two become one flesh, is it possible for two people who cannot become one flesh to be married? Hmm?

So, if two people cannot in principle--now, there are times when there might be an accident of the body, a disease, some kind of this or that that might prevent this male or this female from being able to unite as one flesh, yes? But we're not talking about that. We're talking about whether or not two individuals who in principle cannot procreate--can they get married?

Can they get married? (audience calls out: "no")

Is this possible, according to our Christian understanding? Can such a thing be called "marriage," by any stretch of the imagination? (audience calls out: "no")

Well, then, I have a simple question for you. Can two people of the same sex get married? (audience calls out: "no")

Well, then, if somebody comes to you and offers you a piece of legislation--you're sitting in the legislature, and they say, "This piece of legislation will establish marriage between two men, or marriage between two women"--as a Christian person, can you vote for that piece of legislation? As a Christian person, could you sign onto a platform that said that that's possible for two people? Huh? No. And, under other circumstances, can you listen to some judge tell you that that's marriage, and believe that the words are intelligible in any fashion? No. It doesn't make sense.

Now, I'm not going to mention that there is one party in this country that clearly stands against this notion, and there are others that kinda seem to be playing around with other ideas. But we need to make note of that, right over there. And then, even within the party that says that it affirms marriage, you have all these people who are playing games, and acting as if we can play about with this concept, and pretend that we will respect the real nature of marriage, but then accept for political reasons other kinds of compromises and expedients that actually degrade the marriage state, and turn our backs on it. Does that make any sense? No.

Now, I go thoroughly into the issue of marriage, but one could do the same thing for other issues, like the issue of abortion. We could go through that, and we would find that there's a clear divide in America between one party and another party, and there is a clear divide even within the party that seems to be committed to truth, between those who are in fact committed to truth, and those who are lying. See?

And it's about time that we stopped playing label games. Because if, as was just evidenced, we're serious, and we got up at all those political labels, and that was fun, but when we were asked whether we take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ, we really meant it--then if it is in fact true that that is the name above all names, then which name should determine our will? Which name should determine our choice? Which name should determine our votes? I think I know which one.

(applause)

And I think I have made it pretty clear, to the point where some of the people in the Republican party don't even like having me around any more, that on the day when I must choose between the way that God and Jesus want me to go, and the way that this Republican president, or that Republican senator, and that Republican congresswoman want me to go, I know which way I have to go.

(audience responds: "amen")

And if that means that I shall walk away from this party or that party, or any other party on the face of the earth, there is only one party I want to belong to, and that is the party that will still be standing when the earth is no more, when the skies have fallen, when there will only be left that which will last forever.

(applause)

And I would think that that would be the commitment of all people who, in wearing the Christian label, do not take the name of the Lord their God in vain. Do we take that seriously, as Christians? In the sense that--'cause I wonder, sometimes. I see a lot of folks in America these days, especially in recent years. As a matter of fact, in recent years, it's become so popular to be Christian that even some folks who couldn't possibly really mean it have been professing either to take the name of "Christian," or to respect it.

But the reason I say they couldn't possibly really mean it is because then you go down a list of the things they stand for, and they're diametrically opposed to things that would be understood, and allowed, and so forth, by our Christian principles. That doesn't make sense, does it? I think that's what's meant by taking the Name in vain. When you say one thing, and do another, when you wear one label and then act in a way that does not correspond to the truth of that label, that's what it means to "take the Name in vain."

And so, we have all kinds of people running around now, saying, "I'm a Christian person. I love the Lord, and I'm against abortion--but I'm for it when I vote in the legislature. I'm against abortion, but I'm for it when I sit on the court. I'm against abortion, but I'm for it when I go into the voting booth."

It would seem to me that we've got some people there who are taking the name of the Lord their God in vain, and I frankly don't care what label they wear. Whether they're Republicans telling these lies, Democrats telling these lies (I haven't noticed too many Constitution Party people telling those particular lies, but leave that aside), Independents telling these lies--I don't know who they might be, but at the end of the day, we just need to put what they profess next to what they do, and we see the difference.

(applause)

Can we live on that difference? That's the question that's before America. Can we live on that difference in a whole lot of areas--how we define marriage; how we understand life; what we are in fact going to do about our understanding of responsibility, and family, and decent and responsible government; whether at the end of the day this nation can survive in freedom, when, in order to claim our liberty, we invoke the authority of God, but when we exercise it, we forget the will of God? How long will we survive?

And I find myself these days thinking things like that all the time. I was thinking about this as we were standing there a few minutes ago, because I have to tell you something that has weighed on my heart and mind for the longest time.

One of my great pleasures in life, because I sing a little bit, every now and again, except at the end of a long month like this where I've been giving a lot of speeches, and then I can't sing at all. But I like singing, and one of my favorite kinds of singing is wonderful patriotic songs. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and all of these wonderful things, and I love them. But I have found, over the course of the last few years, that singing them just isn't what it used to be, 'cause part of me is singing the words, and part of me is thinking about the fact that the reality of this nation's life no longer corresponds to those words.

And we can't hide this from ourselves any longer. We can't go about pretending that this is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. We can't go about pretending that this is still a land where justice and liberty and responsibility and all this are respected. And we especially can't go on pretending that this is a land in which we, as a people, as a whole, in terms of our laws and our official purposes--we still understand the relationship between our God, and our freedom.

How can we go on pretending this, in a land where, pretty much outside the walls of this church, I am being told that as a citizen, or as a political leader, as a judge or as a legislator, I cannot acknowledge or speak the name of Almighty God? See? We've accepted this. You know that.

I will be honest with you. If we were still the people that we ought to be--if we were still the people that we ought to be--the tree of liberty would have been watered with our blood several times in the last several decades as we stood up to reject the lies that have been promulgated as law in these United States.

(applause)

And we might have given in to that particular obligation, especially when they stood up the very first time to tell us that there was some conflict between our Constitution and our prayers. Whether it was in our schools or in our legislatures or anywhere else, we should never have accepted this lie.

(audience responds: "amen")

But we did, and that means that every time we sing a song like "God Bless America," we ought to be feeling a little embarrassed, because last time I looked, it's gonna be fairly difficult for God to bless a nation that can no longer, as a nation, speak His name or acknowledge His existence.

Do you think that's likely? But that's the land we live in, now. Why are we fooling ourselves? Our courts have said that, as a nation, as a people, we cannot acknowledge God.

Now, while we're thinking about that from the point of view of our Christian principles, I'd like us to think of ourselves as something else. Any Americans here? Stand up. Anybody who thinks of themselves, "I'm an American"? See?

Now, I will add to this. Whether you're officially so or not, yet, do you think of yourselves as American? Stand up. Everybody's up. See, that's nice, isn't it? Sit down. Thank you.

But, see, as an American, let's think that through. It's bad enough, as Christian people, that we cannot invoke the name of God, but what about as Americans?

Very often, the first moment of an institution's existence is the one in which that which defines its life in principle is most clearly seen and articulated--and that was certainly true of the birth of the United States, when in the context of their grievances against Great Britain, the founding generation of this country decided that they had to say "no," that they finally had to stand up and take a stand in defense of their liberty, their freedom, their understanding of what it was right to do. And they did so.

But they also knew that any time you take a stand that might involve conflict or bloodshed, you had better be sure you've got it right with God. And, unlike what some people would like us to believe, I think anybody who's read the Bible with any care knows that God does not require, and did not require of the Israelites, does not require of us, that one simply roll over and play dead in the face of injustice. He doesn't say that. But we have to be really sure that we're walking His way. If we're gonna take up a sword to defend ourselves, we'd better be really sure that we're not just fighting for our own selfish pride and purposes, but are indeed standing in a place and under a guise that is sanctioned by His authority and His understanding of right and wrong.

Now, our founding generation, they knew that. And they were careful about that. And indeed, when they finally decided "we've gotta take a stand, declare ourselves independent of Great Britain," one of the first things they knew they had to do was not just justify it before human opinion--they had to justify it before Almighty God. And when they declared the independence of this country, they in fact made a statement that has run down through our history and, indeed, throughout the world, and it was a statement that, in the end, was not just about human opinion, but about how their understanding of the injustices done to them had to be placed in the context of the authority and will of God, the law established by God's will.

And they did so. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," they said, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Hmm. Now, from that statement of principle, you can actually deduce the features of our whole way of life as a free people. You can deduce the need for elections, and representative government. You can deduce the need for legislators that will represent the people as they make the law. You can deduce the need for executives that will be elected by the people, as they are responsible for the enforcement of the law. All of it, because government must be based upon consent. You can't just take the sword and force people to do your will. You must first ask their permission, seek their approval, and then you can act on their behalf. That's the principle of our whole way of life.

That's why, on Tuesday, we'll go to the polls. We'll go to the polls not because somebody thought of that as a good way to keep us subservient and quiet--make us believe that our laws were really being made by people we chose. No. The reason we go to the polls is not some strategy. It is because of this principle that laws can't be just if they are not based upon the consent of the people.

But, that idea of consent--where does it come from? It comes from that other principle, that we are all created equal. In order to establish that idea of equality, we invoke the authority of God.

That simple fact leaves me greatly bewildered when I see what's been happening in our country over the last several decades, because we have actually been sitting quietly listening to people--most of them on our courts--telling us that our Constitution requires separation of church and state, and therefore, as a matter of public policy and law, we can never bring God into it.

Every time I think about this, I say to myself, "now, that's interesting." As a people, all our claim to liberty and representative government rests on the invoking of God's authority, but we are now told that, in our politics, we cannot speak His name. Therefore, we cannot invoke God's authority. So that means that, on the day they finally rip off the mask and tell us that we are no longer governing ourselves, we won't be able to say, "oh, God," and ask for His help. See? We will have denied ourselves that privilege. Someone will stand up and say, "You can't say His name in here! Don't bother to call on Him. We ruled Him out of order decades ago."

When are we going to wake up and see what has been done to us?

(applause)

The whole foundation of our claim to liberty is our appeal to Almighty God. If we cannot speak His name, then we have lost our claim to govern ourselves.

And, by the way, if we've lost our claim to govern ourselves, that puts an end to it, doesn't it? It means that this government of the people, by the people, for the people has already perished from this earth. We're going through the motions, but the substance is already gone. It was gone the minute they drove God out of our public discussions.

(applause)

Now, just in case--and I'm sure, because there almost always are, in America--I'm almost loath to take a survey and find out whether there are any lawyers here. It's very hard to gather a group of people together in America, and find no lawyers. But in one sense, that's a reflection of a good thing about us--at least in the past--and that is that we were governed by laws. If you're governed by laws, you need lawyers. It makes perfect sense. So, it was actually a good thing that you would find lawyers about.

One of the reasons we kind of chuckle uneasily these days, though, is because of the way in which the lawyers have been abused in order to justify the destruction of the principle of self-government--and that's making us a little unhappy, even though we may or may not understand it. But for the sake of the lawyers, let's just think through, though, whether what I just said--right as it may seem to our common sense, to our faith-- whether it makes sense in Constitutional terms. 'Cause this is of importance. They tell us that we can't speak the name of God. We can't invoke God. We can't pray to God. We can't base legislation on God, because in America, we're supposed to have separation of church and state.

And these days, when people say that, I notice that most of us just kind of sit there--"Yep, separation of church and state. That's very familiar. That's the way it's supposed to be." And I'm going to stand here and tell you, quite frankly, "No." I have often asked, and I would ask anybody to do it again, go through the Constitution, in case you have one handy. Look up the Constitution. Look down the Constitution. Look at it from the left. Look at it from the right. Look at it crosswise and sideways, and see if there's anything in there at all that includes the words, "separation of church and state."

I can assure you--'cause I've done it many times--it's not there. Okay? It's not there. It's nowhere to be found in the document, this notion of separation of church and state, the words, "separation of church and state." They're not there.

And, of course--I know, I know. Some conscientious and informed lawyer will jump up and say, "Alan, Alan, wait! What about the First Amendment?" That's the famous one that they've been abusing all these years, to establish the notion that somehow the Constitution requires separation. And in that First Amendment it says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

Which one of those words is spelled s-e-p-a-r-a-t-i-o-n? Did you see it in there? I, frankly, didn't hear those syllables in there, but I'll repeat them. "Congress shall make no law"--maybe I missed it somewhere. Maybe it's in there as, kind of, an acrostic or something. Is it? Do you think?

I don't think so. What I find there is the word "Congress"--that's the lawmaking body of the federal government, right? It is, by the way, not the lawmaking body of the state of Florida. That's the state legislature. It's not the lawmaking body of the state of South Dakota, or Nebraska. It's the lawmaking body of the federal government.

"Congress shall make no"--all those words are fairly easy. I have no problem with them.

Now, my children have a problem with the word "no," and have for a long time, but I, like many other people, had that problem myself once, but the first time it was being spoken by somebody who signed my paycheck, I kind of grew up. I suddenly learned to respect "no." It had a great deal more oomph to it, then. But leave that aside.

"Congress shall make no law"--those are little rules legislators pass. We could go into it at great length, but we have a commonsense understanding of it. We could even put X in there, though, for this purpose.

"Congress shall make no law respecting"--now, that might give us a problem, but it never has, because the word "respecting" has been universally understood the same way all throughout the history of this country. It has meant "on the subject of," "concerning," "with regard to." See?

Now, the reason I say it could cause problems is because there is an alternative way to understand that word, right? Hmm? I spent my whole life respecting my father. That means, "showing respect for." But nobody has ever suggested that the word meant that in the Constitution, so we don't have to worry about it. It means only one thing. It's a word that means, "on the subject of," "with regard to."

So, "Congress shall make no law on" this subject. And what is the subject? X. Well, X happens to be an establishment of religion. Hmm?

Now, does that mean that there can, in America, be no establishment of religion? Actually, it doesn't mean that, does it? Does it? Or am I having a problem here with my grammar? I think it says, "Congress shall make no law on the subject of an establishment of religion." Right? What that would then mean is that the federal lawmaking body can't make a law on it. Therefore, there can be no federal law on it. Yes? That's pretty easy. And, now, I go through the Constitution, and I find that, on this issue of establishing religion, those are--that's the only thing that's said. The only thing that's said about it is that there can be no federal law on it.

Now, I'm sitting there as a federal judge, and I read the Constitution that says there can be no federal law on this subject an establishment of religion, and then a law comes to me from-- I don't know--Utah. And in Utah they say--hypothetically, 'cause they don't--they have passed a law requiring that to take an oath of office, you have to be in good standing in the Mormon church, or this or that or the other thing, and I strike it down. And I say, "No! The Constitution forbids that kind of religious establishment." Have I spoken the truth?

Actually, I haven't, because the Constitution said no such thing. The Constitution simply said the Congress couldn't make a law like that. It didn't say that the state of Utah couldn't make a law like that. A matter of fact, if you go to the Tenth Amendment in the Constitution, what does it tell you? "All those powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people." So, what the Tenth Amendment tells you is that that power to deal with the subject of religious establishment that was withheld from the federal government is left in the hands of the states and of the people. That's what the Constitution says about it.

(applause)

Now, somebody explain to me, please--wait, wait. I would wish that some erudite, legal individual would help me out here because, try as I might, I look at those words and I say, well, if I'm sitting on the federal bench and I must follow federal law, first thing I know is that, on the subject of the establishment of religion, there can be no federal law, 'cause that's what the Constitution said.

Second, I know that I should follow the Constitution. That's true. But on this subject, the Constitution says only one thing--that Congress can't wield this power, and that it is left in the hands of the states and the people.

Someone explain to me, then, how the federal judges got themselves mixed up in this thing. I can find no authority for their actions. None whatsoever! Now you'll say, "Well, you're not a lawyer. You don't understand this arcane stuff." The Constitution doesn't belong to the lawyers. The Constitution doesn't start with the words, "we, the lawyers." It starts with the words, "we, the people."

(applause)

And if, and if the lawyers keep coming out with stuff that sounds like gobbledygook to us, then since we own the document, it's gobbledygook. They need to try to clarify their thoughts. Okay? Because, in point of fact, this makes no sense. The notion that the federal courts have anything whatsoever to say about the issue of religious establishment makes no sense.

Now, I know, I know--final point. There would be those who think they've got me. They got me! They trumped me, 'cause there's that Fourteenth Amendment thing, see? The Fourteenth Amendment was an amendment passed after the Civil War, in order to make sure that the states could no longer violate the federally-established rights of people in the United States. This was particularly at the time intended to protect people who would be ex-slaves from having their rights invaded based on that condition of slavery, or color, or prejudices that resulted therefrom. And so they wanted to make it very clear that no state government was to do anything that would violate those rights which people in this country enjoy as citizens of the United States. Yes?

And, all of a sudden, I'm being told that this means that the states can't have an establishment of religion. Whoa! Where do we get that? Well, because we're told the way in which we're gonna establish the privileges, rights, and immunities of citizens of the United States is by looking at the Bill of Rights. We'll look at that Bill of Rights, and we'll say that those are the privileges. And one of the things that the Bill of Rights says is that there can be no religious establishment.

Well, two things are true. First, that is not what the First Amendment says. The First Amendment does not say you cannot establish religion. The First Amendment says Congress can't touch the subject of establishment, one way or another. Doesn't talk about whether it's to establish or disestablish. Simply says, "Can't do it! Can't touch it! This subject is out of bounds for you." Okay?

Second, if you're gonna try to tell me the Bill of Rights is establishing the privileges, I'll grant that. But that would mean that the Bill of Rights--last time I looked, it was the first ten amendments, right? That Tenth Amendment says that all those powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited by the Constitution to the states, are reserved to the states. Oh, gosh! Yeah. You put the First and the Tenth Amendments together--that means the power to establish religion, or to deal with the subject of religious establishment, is reserved to the states, respectively, and to the people.

That's interesting! But that doesn't give the federal courts the right to deal with it, either. That actually should guarantee you against any federal interference of any kind whatsoever. It is one of the immunities of our citizenship. It is one of the privileges and rights of our citizenship, to be free from national dictation. The national sovereign cannot tell us what religion to follow, cannot tell us what religion to deal with at our state and local level. That's what the Constitution intended. And I know it for a fact, because the great wars in Europe that had caused all the bloodshed and conflict were caused by national sovereigns who sought to impose their religion on the provinces and towns and cities under their jurisdiction. And the Constitution was written to make sure that wouldn't happen in the United States.

(applause)

And yet, we now live in a time when the whole intention of that First Amendment has been subverted, and when the very language that was intended to prevent national dictatorship on the subject of religion is used by the federal courts to impose, by dictatorship, a uniform regime of atheism throughout the United States.

(applause)

And some of you may ask, here I am on Patriotic Sunday, a God and Country rally, and I'm talking to folks about this arcane, constitutional subject. Why would I go through all of this? Because, if you were standing up here and you would look out and you would see this wonderful, nicely clean-cut, attentive audience--when I see you all, as Christians wearing the shackles and chains of slavery. That's what I see.

I look out and I see Christian people who have been beaten down from the real obligation of their faithful citizenship with a pernicious lie--that lie being that when you go into the voting booth, step into the judicial office, take up the task of being a legislator, swear the oath as governor or mayor, you must leave God out of it. You must leave your Christian conscience behind, and that this is somehow required by our Constitution, which imposes upon us the separation of church and state. What I have just gone through is what the Constitution actually says, and what the Constitution actually does. Its only result, in fact, is to liberate us from the dictation of the federal government on this matter, not to guarantee that we shall be imposed upon by it.

(applause)

I think it's time for all people of faith and belief to wake up. What the judges have been doing is exactly the opposite of what the Constitution says. We are living in a world that reminds me of the song that was played at Yorktown, as the British marched by after they had surrendered. "The world turned upside down." Instead of living in a society where the sovereignty of the people is based upon our acknowledgment of the authority of God, we now live in a society where the authority of God has been denied, where the sovereignty of the people is usurped, and where the Constitution of the United States is now a sham, imposed upon by the judges and by unscrupulous money and other minorities in order to remove the people from their rightful place, and undermine--among other things--both their courage and their capacity for freedom.

Now, why do I say this? Because in addition to these intellectual shackles--where words like "separation of church and state" can be used to have, for instance, Christian believers kind of (unintelligible), "We can't talk about God in here, so we won't bring Him up"--what has been the result? Well, the result is that we can then get decisions that would ordinarily have to respect the requirements of our God-shaped, God-fearing moral consciences. We get legislation and decisions that no longer take any account of those things.

Decisions like the decision to give us the so-called "right" to murder our children in the womb. Hmm? How could this possibly have come about, this so-called "right"? One of the most--and I don't know whether other folks here who are involved in the legal profession would acknowledge this, but I'll say it, and I think, in open debate, I could prove it against anyone--that Roe v. Wade was the most obscenely illogical and shoddily-written Supreme Court decision perhaps in the whole history of our country. That there was a perverse illogic to it that ought to, even to this day, warn us against the possibility that it has any real ground or foundation in our law or the Constitution. Because it doesn't. I mean, admittedly, Blackmun kind of paid literal lip service to the Constitution. He moved his lips. He acknowledged it's there. And then, like, I don't know. Many of you have spent time as teachers. Every now and again, you get papers from the sophomores and all, where they'll string a bunch of words together and you'll read them over once, read them over twice, read them over three times, and they still don't mean anything. But they sound really good. And, or they'll do something that they think "decisively deals with the issue," and they haven't even touched it.

Blackmun did this, with what he said was the critical issue of Roe v. Wade. The critical issue of Roe v. Wade, he said, was whether or not the Constitution requires that the fetus, the fetus will be treated as a person. He acknowledged that if the fetus must be regarded as a person under our law, then Roe's claims would fall, and the fetus would not only not be subject to abortion, but its life would have to be protected, see--would have to be accorded that respect which is owed to the person, and therefore it could not be deprived of life or liberty, et cetera, without due process. Right? He acknowledged that.

Then what did he do? Well, he went through the Constitution and he looked for each use of the word "person." And he said, "Oh! Lo and behold, there's no use of the word 'person' in the Constitution that refers to fetuses." In other words, we can't elect a fetus President. A fetus can't serve in the Congress. A fetus can't sit on the Supreme Court. This may come as a great shock to all of you.

It is kind of funny, because that's silly. That passes for a Constitutional review? Obviously, it doesn't. Eight-year-olds aren't mentioned either, I don't think, anywhere in the Constitution. Does that mean we can kill them at will? I'm sure there are some eight-year-olds in here that would find that rather disturbing. But don't worry--don't worry. Doesn't mean that, in the least little way.

But see, you know what's interesting? Having gone through and had his clerks or somebody do that particularly silly exercise, he actually apparently didn't bother to read the document. He wouldn't have had to read very far. Right there in the beginning, where he would get to that "we, the people" part that would remind him that he's not in charge of the Constitution--"we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish . . ."

Now, that "posterity" word--it's more than two syllables, and they've been desperately trying in our schools to make sure that our kids can no longer understand words that are longer than two syllables, and they do it precisely so that they can no longer read the Constitution with any understanding, I guess.

But the truth of the matter is, "posterity." It's a Latin root word, and it basically means "our heirs"--the generations who come after us, the issue of our acts of procreation, our children and grandchildren, and so forth and so on. It includes, by the way, people whom we haven't given even the faintest shadow of a thought to. It includes those down through the ages--a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years from now--who shall walk the earth as somehow the little, echoing whispers of the fact that we were here. We cannot think of them. We do not know them. But that word "posterity" includes them.

If it includes those who are not yet the shadow of a thought in our minds, surely it includes those who are sleeping, as it were, in the antechamber of this walking life--our children in the womb. And in that word, therefore, their life is invoked. Their rights, their happiness, the blessings of liberty to which they are entitled are there--right there!--in the Constitution, and they are placed on an equal level with our own. "To secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty."

(applause)

So, if Blackmun had bothered to read the Constitution, he would right there have discovered that the Constitution puts our posterity on an equal level with our own, that the ultimate goal of the Constitution is to make sure that the blessings of liberty--now, what is the first blessing of liberty? Life! That that is going to be secured. And he would have said, "This whole case is in total contradiction with that objective. The Preamble does not dictate law, but it does establish the parameters of interpretation, and therefore, Roe's case falls." It's simple as that, if he'd had any honesty, any integrity, maybe even any ability to read.

And I would like to say, I'm a Republican, but I will remind Republicans here who are constantly going on with that mantra about how all we need to think about when electing a President is, "Oh, that Republican will nominate the judges"--Blackmun was nominated by a Republican. He was placed on the bench at the recommendation of a Republican, and that Republican label was no guarantee against the most atrocious departure from constitutional discipline that this country has ever seen.

So, we are now at this point, then, when we realize that, right there in the Constitution, there is established the parity of the claims of our posterity, and therefore the judgment that was made by the Court that said that our kids didn't have to be (unintelligible)--that was all a lie. And we are now living under a regime in which the most outrageous and atrocious injustice has been perpetrated--contrary to the Constitution, contrary to right, contrary to conscience, contrary to the will of God, contrary to the welfare of our families, contrary to the love that ought to govern our hearts, contrary to the respect for our obligations to the future--all this, perpetrated upon us by the dictatorial and arbitrary will of a Supreme Court decision that had no possible basis in the Constitution of the United States. See?

So, when we have allowed ourselves to walk down this road when we once let the Court drive God from our precincts, what do they do? They next attack the most vulnerable who were protected by our God-shaped consciences.

But that's not all. The other consequence of this, of course, is that, having driven God from our public policy, they drive prayer from our schools. They take the Ten Commandments out of our courthouses. And then, suddenly, the parameters of our choice, and of our sense of right and wrong, are to be governed by nothing but our whims, by the fads and blowing winds of the passions of the day. And in the presence of those whims, nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe.

So that we have come upon the time in which we live, in which not only our innocent children in the womb can be subject to wholesale slaughter, and our judges will call it a "right," but the institution that ought to provide the context in which they can be born, and raised, and reared to become strong and decent citizens of this republic--that institution is under assault from the same source, and with the same licentious disregard for the Constitution and its requirements.

So that now we're looking at a time when, from this self-same legal profession, we find folks standing up to tell us that the legislatures must acknowledge and rewrite and do all this stuff so that homosexuals can get married. People who can't procreate--and therefore couldn't possibly satisfy, according to our Christian consciences and understanding, anything that looks like marriage--they must be allowed to marry.

You know what's fascinating about this? This whole situation is one of the prime examples of the truth that our republic--our democratic republic, our government of the people, by the people, for the people, constitutional republic--is dead.

Because--take Massachusetts, for example. What happened in Massachusetts? The Massachusetts equivalent of the Supreme Court of the state--they have a case number for them, and they decide--after, sort of, undue consideration--that the marriage laws of the state are wrong, and that you must allow people of the same sex to get married.

Now, by the way, if you look at the decision, they didn't take it upon themselves to simply say, "that's it." You know why? Because they realize that, at that point, somebody might stand up and say, "excuse me, y'all are legislating, and you don't have the legislative power. See? They want to exercise the legislative power, but they know that, if they are seen to exercise it simply, someone's going to make a plausible objection that the whole power of legislation is over there, in the legislature. How did you guys get it? See? And then they'll be like the thief caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Suddenly we'll be aware of the fact that they are not exercising a power. They are usurping the power of the people. See? So, instead of doing it openly, they've just said that, "in our opinion, this denial of marriage to people of the same sex is not right, and therefore, you have to rewrite the law." Hmm.

They then went on very carefully, by the way, to note that therefore, their decision did not make any change in the law. Since their decision didn't make any change in the existing law of the state of Massachusetts, and since the legislature has not acted on the subject, you might be wondering how it is that homosexuals are being married in Massachusetts.

It's because Mitt Romney, who is now running around the country telling people he's an opponent of same-sex marriage, forced the justices of the peace and others to perform same-sex marriage, all on his own, with no authorization or requirement from the court. Tells you how twisted our politicians have become. On the first day, he forces homosexual marriage through in the state of Massachusetts without any warrant or requirement from the court, and the day after that, he goes to a conference sponsored by Focus on the Family to announce what a strong supporter he is of traditional marriage. Ugh! God help us, please! See?

But I'm pointing this out because even there, in the court, they acknowledge the legislature has to do this. "We can't do it." But, in any case, what would be the ground for the court getting involved in this in any way? The question of, what's gonna be marriage, you know, and what are its terms will be, and all that?

Well, part of it has to do with the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, which established the notion that somehow it was outside the boundaries of equitable law to discriminate against homosexual behavior. And the implication of that, of course, was that that was a violation of separation, because you were following what was essentially a religious dictate, and that provided no legitimate grounds for law in the United States. All a lie, by the way. One of the reasons why the first clause there, in the Bill of Rights, can't be interpreted as they do, is because the whole point of withholding the power of establishment from the federal government was to allow for the variations among the states that were inevitable at the time, because most of the state governments were in fact governments established by this or that denomination, which reflected the beliefs on marriage and other things of those denominations. See?

So, this is the kind of mess we get ourselves into. We forget our history. We forget the truth. We ignore the words in our documents, and suddenly we have our judges not only, first of all, driving God out of our politics, but once our appeal to His authority is gone, they begin, step by step, to take away the power of our representatives to determine the essential features of law. If they can tell us what marriage is, then they can dictate, with some plausible case of rights or equity, any subject at all. We are no longer living under a government of laws passed by our legislature. We are not living under a government of laws at all. We are living under the dictatorship of judges who derive their authority from God knows what source of legitimacy.

(applause)

And the end result though, too--how have they used this authority they have so abusively acquired? They have used it to assault our innocent life in the womb, to assault our hearts and harden them against future generations, to encourage our selfishness and our self-indulgence by leading us to believe that not only could we prefer our own interest to that of the future, but we could even sacrifice that future sleeping in the womb to our lust and our convenience, to our pain and our grief, to our needs whenever we felt like it. Abortion is more than just the slaughter of our babes in the womb. It is the slaughter of our decent conscience, and it is the slaughter of our obligation to our posterity.

(applause)

But more than this, they have used that power also to assault the fundamental institution of our social life, and of our individual consciousness and courage. 'Cause that's what the family is. Yes, it's a social unit, but it's also the unit into which we can be born, in which for a while we are treated as a precious and important commodity--no matter what our station in the world, no matter what our place. No matter rich or poor, no matter whether we can stand before the world in that moment in the clothing of power, or whether we do so with no clothing except the love and respect that our parents have for us. In the context of the family, we are each and every one of us born as little kings and queens, as little princes and princesses, with our servants ready to do for us all that is needed--to feed us and clothe us and care for us, to listen at our every whim, to hear the cries of our every need, and to respond to those cries as if they were the cries of the Master of the universe. For in a way, they are. In the body of that little child--in the cry, in the needs, in the hunger, and in the life--we hear the cry of the child, but it is the voice of the Lord our God, calling us to our obligation and our responsibility to the young, and to our future.

But even there--even there!--this institution has now come under assault, so that the connection between family and procreation, between marriage and children, between the sexual indulgence and all the joys that can be associated with relationship, are placed under the fruitful and easy yoke of our obligation to new generations, binding us--fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, parents and children--across the generations, to hand off the fruits of our liberty, and the truth of our faith, to new generations.

That's what the family is. Destroy it, and you have severed that connection. Destroy it, and you have undermined that incubator of true self-respect which is what, in the end, allows us--each and every one--to stand before a world that knows not who we are, with the sure certainty that God knows us, for we have felt His hand, and we have known His love. It was the hand of our mother and the love of our father and the care of our parents that nurtured us, as if we were the most precious good in this world. Destroy that family, and you have destroyed the foundation of healthy individualism--the healthy sense that every person matters. And that, whether we think about it or not, is one of the foundations of what it means not only to be an American, but to be a person conscious of, and capable of, real liberty.

So, finally, I ask a question. Among all the issues that we are confronted with these days--there are issues that involve our moral sovereignty, issues that involve our constitutional sovereignty, issues that in the literal sense, like the border and whether we're gonna protect it--involve the maintenance of our sovereignty as a nation and as a people. All of them, in the end, come down to the truth that we have turned our back on the fundamental principle that makes us free.

Well, I take that wrongly. We haven't turned our back. Our judges have turned it for us, and our cowardly legislators and politicians have allowed them to do so--sacrificing their responsibility, by the way.

I say that--it's hard for me to speak in Florida at any time, without reminding people that Jeb Bush was one of these people. I thought at one time I was gonna like him, but then the Terri Schiavo thing happened. And he looked good, for a minute there. And then he forgot the separation of powers.

He forgot that even though the judges do, as they claim, have the right to look at the Constitution, compare it to the law, and say that the law--the part of the law that's not in conformity with the Constitution, they obviously can't follow, 'cause it's inconsistent with their oath.

Well, let me put it this way. If you're the governor of the state of Florida, and you look at the Constitution, and you look at what a judge is saying--an opinion or a requirement--and what the judge says conflicts with the Constitution, can you carry it out? Can you acquiesce in it?

By the same token as the judge claims the right to follow the Constitution and not the law as written by the legislature, so the executive must follow the Constitution and not the opinion expressed by the judges. See?

(applause)

But Jeb Bush not only didn't acknowledge this responsibility--he wouldn't even hear it! I tried to go and talk to him. He wouldn't even listen. It's kind of sad. See? And the woman was done to death, when all he had to do was stop it was show up. All he had to do was go there. Could have sent somebody in his name, or could have gone himself. Walked through and said, "oh, by the way, constitution of the state of Florida guarantees to every person living here an unalienable right to life. And by the way, the word 'unalienable' means that no judge can transfer that right to another person."

The exercise of that right is unalienable! Can't be taken away. Can't be given to another. And therefore, the notion that somehow her husband or anybody else had the right to do her to death was contrary to the clear, plain words of the Florida constitution.

It's right there in front of us. It was right there in front of Jeb Bush. He went through all the posturing, to look like he was all concerned about this, but all he had to do was act, 'cause he's the chief executive. And you know a wonderful thing about the constitution of the state of Florida? It doesn't just say that executive power shall be vested in a governor. The implication of that is clear, in all our constitutions, but Florida says, "the supreme executive power." 'Cause I remember going talking to one of his aides, and he said, "well, what if the sheriff should do X, Y, or Z?"

And I said, "the governor's the supreme executive authority in this state. If the sheriff tries to stop him or his agent from doing anything, they are in insurrection against the duly established government of Florida, and they could be arrested or shot on the spot. Period. End of sentence!" Okay?

So, this was some little whippersnapper who probably just got out of law school. I don't know who he was. But the truth of the matter is, he didn't know his head from a hole in the wall, when it came to a constitutional understanding.

Why'd I go through all of that? Because you see, if we're going to correct this, we're going to need legislators who understand their responsibility, too. We're gonna need people who realize that the courts are not supreme. The law is supreme. The Constitution is supreme. If the judges depart from the law, if their opinion has no foundation in the law, if it is not palpably based on that which is in the Constitution, then it has no force of law. The legislature is not obliged to obey the judges, when the judges refuse to obey the Constitution. When they're making it up, we don't have to go along.

(applause)

Now, it gets complicated, because in order for legislators to act, you've got to have majorities, and so forth and so on. That's where the executive comes in, because the executive can prevent judicial injustice just by refusing to carry it out. Hamilton points out in the Federalist Papers that the courts--the federal, he was talking about the federal judiciary--but it has neither force nor will. The will of the people is represented by the legislature, and the force of the people--all of it--is vested in the executive.

We don't have plural executives, in America, anywhere. Executive power rests in the hands of the supreme executive in the state of Florida. That's why Jeb Bush had nobody who could oppose him, except the President of the United States, and I think his brother was busy that day.

But, in any case, he didn't have to worry--and the legislature was on his side, so he didn't have to worry about being accused of any kind of abuse. The legislators would just applaud it and said, "yep, that was our will."

And that's what the Constitution intended. It didn't intend any one branch to be able to impose its will on its own. If the judges, in fact, are going to (unintelligible)--it's just like the Brown v. Board of Education decision. When did that decision become law? Some people believe it became law in 1954, when the Court promulgated it, but that's not true. The Court promulgated it, and it was ignored throughout the South. Did you know that? Nobody paid any attention to it.

And then, at one point, Eisenhower decided that--I believe it was in Arkansas, there--he was gonna finally tell one of these people who was not paying attention to it that the enforcement power of the federal government was behind the Supreme Court's decision. And when that combination of judicial opinion and executive force came together, at that moment and that moment alone, Brown v. Board became the law of the land.

Opinion without force is not law. And that's why the Constitution separated these powers, so that we wouldn't live under tyrants who could gather all of the power of government into their own hands, so that they would always have to seek help, and that that help would have to come from some duly elected official or majority, responsible to the people. That's how self-government is maintained.

But we no longer have it, as you can see.

Now, all of this I go through, complicated as it may seem sometimes, because the root of it, as we saw, was what? Was the point at which they drove God out of our politics, drove us away from our appeal to Him in our citizenship. Now, who's going to be responsible for restoring the courage that comes from our reliance on God, so that we can once again begin to take hold of this great constitutional system, and make it work the way it's supposed to?

Who do you think will do it? Do you think the agnostics will do it? They're too busy trying to make up their minds.

Think the atheists will do it? They're the ones more than a little bit responsible for this whole notion that God shall be driven out.

Only the people of God who are called by His name are likely to stand up and bear witness to the truth that the authority that guarantees our freedom is the authority of God, that the courage that ought to promulgate and defend our freedom must rely upon the aid of God, and that therefore we cannot fail, so long as we respect the authority of God.

That's why I have gone through all of this on this God and Country Sunday. 'Cause you see, we may think that that's the putting together of two distinct entities, but it's not, in America. Our freedom comes from our appeal to God, and without God, there is no freedom. Our courage comes from our faith in God, and without faith, there is no liberty.

So you see, it's either God and country, or it's no country at all for us. And that means that those of us who believe in God, who call upon Him, who attempt in our feeble and weak and often faulty way to follow His will--we are the bulwark of this nation's life and liberty. Our conscience shall be its conscience. Our courage shall be its courage. And in the end, our vote shall be the only thing that can bring within the precincts of our political life that respect for the sovereignty of God without which this nation--this government of, by, and for the people--shall surely perish from the earth.

So on this God and Country Sunday, I would ask that you examine your consciences as a Christian people, and remember that ours is the law of love. As we are to love individuals in a selfless way that leads us to come down off the high horse of our assured salvation and help them out of the ditch of faithlessness and brutalization, so we must help our country. So we must answer its call. So we must come from the places where we pray and worship, where with groanings we call upon the Lord to bless our nation and save it from these evils, in order to become--with our voices, with our votes, with our courageous stands on the hustings, and on the bench, and in the public square--we must become the hand of its salvation, the word of its salvation, the voice of His healing for our land. And as we do, I think this nation will be called back both to the right path of liberty and to its right destiny, not only for us, but for all those whom we represent.

"And who's that?" you say. Well, look around you. I look at this audience, and I see people of every race, and creed, and color, and kind, from backgrounds of all over the world, come together in a common stream now of faith, but also of liberty. We hold aloft the candle of hope, not just for ourselves and our posterity, but for all those throughout the world whom we now represent. We can carry that light into a future in which the capacity of mankind for liberty and therefore true happiness, can be affirmed--or we can let it die.

And I believe, in these election years--like the one we will face on Tuesday--the crisis of this hope is coming to a head. Will you be there to carry a torch for God, so that His light may shine upon this decision, in order to help to call our nation again to a right path of justice and healing? Believe me--if you are not there to speak with His voice, do not count on His voice being heard. But if you are there, then count on it. He will hear our prayers, and He will heal this land.

God bless you.

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