Alan's the key: Ask his growing corps of supporters for '08

September 7, 2007
Helen Weir, RenewAmerica analyst

They're still signing on. People from across the country are going to the petition at AlanKeyes.com every day and adding their names and remarks to the list of those who are hoping, praying, and working to see Alan Keyes run for President in 2008.

The petition itself represents only the tip of a conservative iceberg submerged under a virtual media blackout of the draft-Keyes effort, an iceberg that is ready to sink a RINO nomination as surely as the hunk of ice that sank the Titanic.

Only a relative few are aware of this phenomenon — but happily, the mainstream media doesn't actually create reality. At best, it only mimics it. Those who want to know what is really going on — and who want to participate in it themselves — can easily do so and can encourage others to do so as well.

Double standard

"Yes, but why should reporters pay attention to Dr. Keyes?" a friend retorted the other day, as I was describing to her this state of affairs. "It's not like he's announced or anything."

"When's the last time you caught any coverage on Fred Thompson?" I returned before Fred announced. "The media was not only giving him virtual saturation coverage for a while there, they were actually hounding him to get on board."

"I never thought of that," she frowned.

Why would the liberal media establishment manifestly prefer one unofficial potential '08 contender over another? Why is the impetus for drafting Alan Keyes coming from the grassroots on up, while for months the driving force behind the Thompson almost-campaign originated with the elites, and only then trickled back down?

Why do so many rationally-impenetrable mantras surround and suffocate the very mention of Alan Keyes' name, while the Thompsons of the political world — whose issues positions and credentials are shakier — get a pass, both on screen and in commonplace conversation?

The answers to these questions are linked, I believe, to the fundamental reason why so many people of all levels of political involvement so passionately support Dr. Keyes in the first place. Let's take a look at those reasons and, in the process, explode some of the pernicious myths that are preventing us from undertaking the mission of American renewal that confronts our generation, as the "greatest" of them was confronted by the reality of World War II.

Combating America's "decay from within"

"Over the years, I have watched the pro-life principle of personhood slowly erode as many, if not most, pro-life Americans have become more concerned about winning elections than supporting a man or woman whose commitment is to truth," states Judie Brown of ALL (American Life League).

While Mrs. Brown does not formally endorse candidates or potential candidates, Alan Keyes included, she does speak out fearlessly about the gravity of the situation we face. Mrs. Brown continues:

As a result of this decay from within, we as a movement, not to mention the nation, are facing a watershed moment in political history. As a Catholic pro-life leader I find this possibility frightening, though I know that at the end of the day God is in charge and His truth will overcome.

I cannot bear to think about what might happen to preborn children if, as has often happened in the past, political expediency is deemed to be more urgent than doing what is right. Over the past 38 years of my involvement in defending innocent human beings as persons, it has become crystal clear that one of the reasons why we have failed to achieve meaningful victory in legislation or elections is our willingness to succumb to the whims of politicians rather than the will of God. I pray that this does not continue to be the case.

I recall that, once, when I was discussing this serious problem with Ambassador Alan Keyes, he pointed out to me that the root of the evil can be seen when one peels away the veneer of rhetoric and begins to examine the substance of pro-life political posturing. He was right then, and his words still haunt me, even now.

I pray that each of us will examine the challenges we face during the 2008 election cycle and, perhaps for the first time, do what God wants rather than what the polls, politicians, and talking heads tell us is best for America. Catholics have a special obligation in this regard, for we possess in our faith the fullness of truth. Let us use that gift to lead, not to be led into error. God help us if we fail.

What Mrs. Brown aptly describes as a "watershed moment" in our national history is certainly upon us. We used to have two major parties that were pro-life, as indeed Americans qua Americans — regardless of political affiliation — understood themselves to be, as well. Pressured by the radicals who promote the notions of Margaret Sanger, however, the Democrats eventually went pro-choice, while "pro-abortion" is the only possible description of their stance by now.

(Correction: Even the term "pro-abortion" no longer covers it, actually. Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama, after all, failed to support the Born Alive Infants Protection Act while he was a senator in Illinois, indicating that, as surely as "pro-choice" becomes "pro-abortion," "pro-abortion" becomes "pro-infanticide" and — in view of the Schindler-Schiavo slaying — "pro-euthanasia" as well. A friend of ours once told me, from the comfort of my own living room couch, that what I was telling him about Obama simply couldn't be the case, since the Democratic "rising star" is obviously — as the media unfailingly presents him — such a wonderful and winning guy. It's truly blood-chilling, the extent to which the simple facts of our political situation have been successfully banished from our mainstream discussion of it.)

With the Democrats — speaking in sweeping generalizations, and meaning no disrespect for the Bob Caseys among them — successfully reduced to the level of useful idiots of the Sangerians, the Republicans began looking like the conservatives' great hope. After all, historically speaking, the GOP is the party of Lincoln, that great champion of the principle of human equality that is — in our own times, even more radically than in his — being called into question in our common way of life.

2008 has been a long time coming, but the ascendancy of a Giuliani has long been feared by pro-lifers of all stripes and ranks, as the Sangerian stench began to be sniffed beneath the Republican "Big Tent" as well. Only now do we begin to see that the strategy Mrs. Brown decries as placing electability before obedience to God has been nothing but a means of winning battles while losing the war. What will happen if the RINO power bid is not, at this late date, successfully opposed?

A true pro-life champion

Draft-Keyes petition signer John Schutte of Ohio puts the matter most precisely. "America MUST have a pro-life choice on election day!" he declares. "Otherwise, we're a pro-choice country with no choice at all."

Alan Keyes stands alone, among national leaders of any party, on the right side of our nation's cultural "watershed." While other politicians can be validly described as "anti-abortion" in varying degrees, only championship of the unalienability of the right to life itself will lift us up and off of the "slippery slope" of the culture of death, and only Dr. Keyes has revealed himself to be its thoroughgoing champion.

To occasionally oppose one aspect or another of the advancing American holocaust, as new manifestations of it continually crop up, is simply not going to cut it, as far as the survival of our threatened innocents — and our common survival as a nation — goes.

To want to "overturn Roe" in order to turn the public abortion decision back to the states is no solution at all, for what does it matter if lower-than-federal authority rather than federal authority itself effectively countenances these innumerable and intrinsically immoral acts?

To be "personally opposed" to such things, while simultaneously being publicly committed to them, is old news, while becoming magically "pro-life" (because the base is rightly clamoring for such a candidate) is more transparently ignoble still.

All this emphasis on abortion isn't a matter of "single-issue-mindedness," either. Only a leader who grasps the principle driving authentic pro-life conviction will be able to understand and respond to its far-reaching applications throughout our society and foreign policy as a whole, as Dr. Keyes uniquely does.

To simply list being "pro-life" as one item on a laundry list of things you hope will get you elected will not help a leader apply the bedrock American understanding of the primacy of the right to life to the other critical problems we face, from the terrorist threat to the collapse of support for traditional marriage.

Americans who understand these things — viscerally, intellectually, spiritually, or in any combination of these ways — are flocking to Dr. Keyes' banner in increasing numbers every day. Therefore, Pernicious Myth Number One goes down in flames: namely, that the pro-life problem can now be safely demoted to second (or third, or fourth, or one-hundredth) on our list of national priorities, and that there is no one out there, in any case, who really supports or grasps it in the first place.

"A man for this time"

On the way back from the straw poll in Iowa, I had a chance to stop in at the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago. Joe Scheidler, like Judie Brown, does not endorse politicians formally. Nevertheless, the "Green Beret of the Pro-Life Movement" had this to say about my "We Need Alan Keyes for President" T-shirt:

"I'm a Keyes man, 100%."

Why does that concept — of totality, of integrity, of one-hundred-percentness — constantly recur in the context of a possible White House run by Dr. Keyes? In flat contradiction of the "Necessity of Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils" myth, there actually exists a national leader whom conservatives can support, both positively and wholeheartedly.

"I would be more excited than I can say if Alan Keyes were to run for president," remarks Regina Doman, author of the popular children's pro-life book Angel in the Waters, as well as other quality works (check out her achievements at www.reginadoman.com). She adds:

He's someone I could definitely . . . have confidence in. I'll never forget his speech at the Republican convention when he was running against Clinton: "We don't have money problems; we have moral problems." I would love to see him on the ballot.

"Finally, a man of principle," writes petition signer Louis DePrisco — while Gloria Biermann adds:

A statesman who believes in God and truth, and who has more courage than 40 men, is the kind of man we need to stand up for our country and for God. [Alan Keyes] is truly a man for this time.

Rev. Kevin Peek of Georgia, addressing Dr. Keyes directly, appends to his online signature in support of a Keyes candidacy in '08 the following remarks: "You are the only candidate I have ever voted for, that I truly believed had all that it took to be president of the United States. Please, give us something to reach for again."

Surely, this is not the language of political minimalism, nor of conservative capitulation, either. Even eight years of Bill Clinton were not enough to convince us that, as far as public service goes, character doesn't count. Reports of the demise of the Republican base have also, evidently, been greatly exaggerated as well.

We have nothing to defeat us but Declarationist defeatism itself

Perhaps the most aggravating of all currently-prevailing political myths is the one that is invariably repeated after an admission that the person parroting it loves Dr. Keyes and believes in all that he stands for. "But," the objection inevitably comes up, "it's too bad he doesn't have any real chance, after all."

Nobody says this about liberals — least of all, liberals themselves. All the Democratic frontrunners are so far left they're about the fall off the coast of California, and yet everyone treats them as serious, mainstream contenders. If our political opponents took their own agenda as lightly as we seem to take ours, we wouldn't be facing a showdown situation in this country in the first place.

Petition signer Jeremy Buchholz has a thoughtful perspective to offer on this point. An accomplished Christian martial artist who runs a studio in Wisconsin (see www.onetreemartialarts.com), he explains:

If we don't believe we'll break a brick, we'll naturally slow down our strike before contact. It is in fact that very stutter that causes the brick not to break. At the root, it is the unbelief that causes our failure.

If this insight is true of a black belt breaking something, or engaging in a sparring match, or taking on an actual fight, how much more does it apply to the cultural battle for the preservation of our Judeo-Christian and American heritage?

"Freedom's holy light" and its modern-day champion

"We stand at a moment in history in which the 'holy light' of the American experiment — carrying the torch, as it does, for the continuity of Judeo-Christian, western, and decent human principle — will be either championed or extinguished. Alan Keyes is its champion."

These were among my own remarks, at the time I had the privilege of sending my signature through cyberspace on behalf of Dr. Keyes. I do not believe that I overstate the case, and neither, obviously, do countless other people expressing the same sentiment in their own way. Read through the petition remarks some time. It will give you an entirely different impression of where we are as a society than you will get through your TV screen.

The compounding names and comments of these on-target Americans definitely destroy the most pernicious myth of all — the belief that some individual Keyes supporters seem privately to hold, that they are the only Keyes supporters in the entire country. If this myth alone could be dislodged, we'd be positioned for the greatest conservative landslide since the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan.

And don't just stop at reading the petition, either. Sign and promote it, too.

© Helen Weir