The following are excerpts from one of the greatest speeches I have ever heard, delivered by Alan Keyes earlier this month. For a complete transcript of the speech, click here:
The establishment clause, the famous clause in the Constitution, cited by the ACLU and everybody else to tell us that somehow or another, especially if you do a little shenanigans with the 14th amendment, the federal judges get to dictate what can take place with respect to religion at every level in this nation’s life. Throughout my adult life, since I first came to appreciate the real meaning of those words, I have marveled at the fact that they get away with this because it’s one of those cases (it’s not a case even like Roe v. Wade where they had to make something up). No, this is a case where the Constitution reads one way and what they’re doing simply violates what it says, and we let them get away with it.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Now somebody here must realize that hard as we try, those words are not difficult to understand. No, they’re not. “Congress shall make no law.” The only possible difficulty might be “respect”, but it’s not hard, just go to the dictionary and look it up. What does it mean? With regard to concern and having to do with, dealing with. Why is it that over the course of the years, we have allowed the Left in this country to get away with arguing as if that read, “Congress shall make no law establishing a religion”? We even fall into this trap and talk as if the establishment clause has something to do with the substantive issue of establishment. And it does not. All the establishment clause does, is look at the Congress (read “the federal government”) because last time I looked, if “Congress can’t make a law”, the federal government can’t lawfully act. And so, “Congress shall make no law that has anything to do with, that concerns, that deals with the establishment of religion.”
Now why would the writers of the Constitution have said that? I think it’s pretty obvious. This was a clear sign. It’s like one of those signs in New York that people used to put near their parking spaces, “Don’t even think about parking here.” The Founders simply said with the establishment clause, to the national government in very loud and clear terms, to the congress, to the federal government, “Don’t even think about this issue. None of your business.” That’s what they said. In the clearest possible way. And on top of every thing else, just in case you are of a mind to try to say, “Well, lo, there is the Constitution itself. The judges can get their authority from that. Yes, they can, but there’s nothing else in the Constitution about this. Whoa! That means that the only thing that’s said about this issue is that Congress (read “the federal government”) can’t touch it. So whether you look at the federal laws or you look at the Constitution, there’s nothing in it that could remotely provide a basis for federal intervention by any branch whatsoever.
We do remember, don’t we, that the Constitution governs all the branches? That no branch can deal with this issue at the national level. Now, here’s the clincher. Also very simple. This is not hard to understand. In the 10th amendment to the Constitution, it says very clearly that all those powers that the Constitution has not delegated to the national government, to the United States, as it says in that amendment, all those powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are what? Are reserved, reserved. That is to say, reserved. Last time I looked if I had a reservation at a hotel that means my name’s on it. It’s mine. Somebody else shows up to claim that room, they can’t have it, because it’s reserved for me. All those powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.
Now, let’s do simple, step by step logic here. The Constitution not only does not give the federal government any power to address issues of establishment, it explicitly forbids it to do so. And nowhere in the document is there a word that could be constructed as in any way prohibiting the states in this regard. And in fact, the history of the country bears this out because most of the states at the time that the amendment was passed still had established churches of one kind or another. They were not only not touched, but they were protected by the force of this amendment and those famous words about the wall of separation, in that letter Thomas Jefferson was explaining that very fact. Federal government can’t touch you. In his own inaugural address he said the same thing: “I left these matters where the Constitution found them, in the hands of the states and the people.” That’s what he said.
Keys Calls for More Moores’
First step in that, in my opinion, is we must proliferate “Roy Moores” all over America. We must have “Roy Moores” in the county courthouses, we must have “Roy Moores” on the boards of education, we must have “Roy Moores”, if we can find them, in the governors’ houses, we must have American citizens standing up on the ground of the Constitution, saying “no” to the unlawful judgments of abusive courts. And we must do so without trepidation, without the “Oh, we’re destroying law and order.” No, my friends, if they tear down the supreme law of this land, they have destroyed the very foundation of all law, they have destroyed the meaning of order in America. That is what they have done for decades.
Rallying around these brave individuals, we must then organize a grass roots movement. Literally. In state after state there must be rallies in their support, demanding that the representatives of the people defend the right of the people to honor God according to the Constitution of the United States.
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