Keyes: Other GOP presidential candidates lack moral courage

Former Illinois Senate candidate Alan Keyes says he officially entered the 2008 White House campaign because the current field of presidential candidates from both parties has failed to address what he labels the "moral crisis" facing America. He claims he's the only candidate who would apply The Declaration of Independence principles to American laws and lives.

kmcheng said: Jim Brown OneNewsNow.comSeptember 18, 2007

Former Illinois Senate candidate Alan Keyes says he officially entered the 2008 White House campaign because the current field of presidential candidates from both parties has failed to address what he labels the "moral crisis" facing America. He claims he's the only candidate who would apply The Declaration of Independence principles to American laws and lives.

That last statement will do Mr. Keyes in.  If he could have worded it differently, and not said "AND LIVES",  it would come across better.  Sounds like government would tell people how to live their lives.

Need Anyone Say Any More?

The premise of the Declaration

As Jefferson pointed out, the American idea of self-government was meant to refute the notion that "some are born with saddles on their backs and others booted and spurred to ride them." Differences of ability, endowment, and ambition offered no title to rule because the human capacity for self-government is not restricted to the princely few. People need not be controlled by the stratagems of their natural rulers. Their control can come from within, through their willing acceptance of their responsibility to, and for, the will that has made and governs the whole. Everyone has an equal capacity inwardly to accept and acknowledge this will, an equal opportunity to establish within themselves the faith and moral discipline that makes commoners into princes in their own right, as rulers of their own passions and sovereigns of their own hearts.

Of course, if we do not acknowledge the existence of the One who has made and governs the whole, the assertion of this equal political capacity fails. The American idea of political equality evaporates. It becomes clear that the acknowledgement of the Creator as the source of human rights in the American Declaration of Independence cannot be treated as an incidental by-product of historical circumstances. It cannot safely be discarded as a reflection of the time-bound religiosity of the Founding generation. It was the indispensable key to the assertion of human political equality; the bedrock foundation of personal sovereignty; the essential first principle of government of, by, and for the people.

The intellectuals, lawyers, and politicians who now encourage us to drive all thought of God from our public and political life may claim to represent progress and liberalism. But with banishing the thought of God, we also banish the ideas of political equality and true freedom. For Americans who care about their liberty, this looms as the greatest threat to our country's future.

No one who has failed to take this threat seriously should for a moment be considered for any position of leadership in this nation's life. As we shall see, that narrows our choices considerably.