True conviction: The key to victory in 2010?

by Alan Keyes
Posted: August 07, 20091:00 am Eastern
© 2009

As opposition intensifies against the totalitarian takeover of the health system, the Obama faction and its henchmen are seeking to portray all opposition as irrational, crazy extremists.
Naturally, conservatives are protesting against what one psychiatrist sees as an effort to dehumanize the Obama faction's opponents, to silence them and discourage others from openly associating with them. Yesterday's e-mail included a note from Don Wildmon of the American Family Association objecting to this strategy of intimidation. It quoted extensively from a mailing in which Gary Bauer encouraged opponents of the proposed health system takeover to take heart because, "The fact is, you are in the majority now – not the leftists trying to push European socialism on you."

Of course, I agree with Wildmon and Bauer in their protest against the Obama faction's campaign to denigrate and intimidate all opposition. It smacks of the repressive mentality we should expect from people like Obama, who were schooled in strategy and tactics by dedicated Communists like Saul Alinsky. Given what they are doing as they battle to gain and consolidate totalitarian control of our country, we have good cause to fear what they will do once their objective has been achieved. I cannot help but recall that as part of the strategy of totalitarian repression in the old Soviet Union, it became commonplace for dissidents to be committed to insane asylums after bogus psychiatric exams.

Unfortunately, while seeming to protest against the Obama faction's abuses, Bauer's words of encouragement to their opponents could be taken to suggest that the reason it's wrong to characterize opponents of the takeover as crazy is that they are now the majority. But if they were not the majority, would portraying them as kooks be acceptable? I can already hear readers objecting that it's wrong and unfair to suggest that someone like Gary Bauer would advocate the majoritarian fallacy. After all, even if a majority supported the health care takeover, many Americans would still oppose it because both the facts and America's moral principles condemn the surrender of liberty and conscience it involves. Gary Bauer is famous as a champion of faith and moral principle. Even if a majority clamored for it, he would courageously oppose Obama's totalitarian scheme simply because facts and truthful reasoning require that he do so. Wouldn't he?

Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born citizen" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, help us reach half a million on petition and sign up now!

Once I would have been sure of the answer. But in recent months too many conservative leaders have been silent as the Obama faction sought to denigrate and dehumanize people whose only fault was their unwillingness to surrender the requirements of truthful reasoning. Other reputed conservatives have gone further, gleefully joining the jackals of ridicule. Now they find themselves being dumped in the same category as those the Obama faction's media claque refers to as "birthers" and portrays as kooks and extremists.

People like me have carefully presented the analysis of fact and constitutional provision that supports our demand for an authoritative investigation and decision with regard to the question of Obama's constitutional eligibility for the presidency of the United States. Facts and reasoning have been ignored, however, as the Obama faction systematically blocks disclosure of all relevant documents and information. They have relied upon the force of repression and verbal assault to arm the bodyguard of lies assembled to expel from the public square any who refuse to accept the transparent and self-contradictory fabrications with which they have contemptuously dismissed the requirements of truth and the Constitution. Conservatives, who were silent or complicit in the face of this campaign against people who simply refuse to surrender their reason and common sense, now protest against the Obama faction's use of similar tactics in its push to establish totalitarian control. Did they not realize the accuracy of the observation found in Shakespeare's classic study of tyrannical usurpation: "Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill"?

I oppose Obama's totalitarian takeover of the health system for the same reason that I demand an authoritative investigation and decision as to his constitutional eligibility for the presidency: After careful examination of the available evidence, and in light of the constitutional or moral principles we claim to respect, I cannot with integrity do otherwise. In one case a majority applauds my conclusion. In the other it may not. But I can no more abandon the rational conviction of right to curry favor with a majority than I could to gain money, power or any other material gain. I believe that the key to the survival of republican and constitutional self-government lies in the possibility of leadership that has the heart and conscience to battle for right against the tide of opinion, with the faith that ultimately truth, courageously advocated, will move the common sense of the people. The history of our republic bears me out. The successful battles against slavery and for worker's rights, women's rights and civil rights all were begun and sustained by those who had the courage of true conviction.

(For the moment, no matter what the transient polls may say, the congressional majority the Obama faction achieved in the last election may be enough to secure passage of the takeover legislation, thus establishing the infrastructure for totalitarian control of health care. When that congressional majority speaks, must all opposition be silent? Must all dissenters quietly submit? It is human nature to retreat in the aftermath of exercised power. When unheeding ambition wins its temporary victories, what keeps the flame of righteous opposition burning? The conviction of truth and right – like the conviction that led the first patriots to declare the independence of the United States, and that sustained them through defeats and losses in the sometimes desperate battles that followed.

I believe that such conviction will move dissenters to the polls in 2010. In righteous anger, they will vote out the factional majority that now drives America to ruin. Until that election is over, we will not know whether the dissenters represent a winning electoral majority. But if those who oppose the socialist takeover act on their conviction, it will not matter when the media praises Obama to the skies in the run up to the 2010 election. It will not matter that his devoted media claque fabricates, for him and his allies, the aura of deserved victory. Instead of voting for the media-touted winners, people will vote to win a victory for liberty, conscience and the Constitution.

But which leaders will deserve their vote when so many so-called conservatives have surrendered to the majoritarian delusion that electoral victory is all that matters? Those who have proven that they think truth and the Constitution matter more. I pray that enough conservative leaders will step forward to offer such proof, before it is too late.

For more from Alan Keyes visit http://loyaltoliberty.com. Once a high-level Reagan-era diplomat, Alan Keyes is a long-time leader in the conservative movement, well-known as a staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate of the Constitutional Republic, including respect for the moral basis of liberty and self-government. He staunchly resists the destruction of the American people's sovereignty by fighting to secure our borders, abolish the federal income tax, end the insurrectionary practices of the federal Judiciary, and build a banking and financial system that halts elite looting of America's wealth and income. He formally severed his Republican Party affiliation in April of 2008 and has since then worked with America's Independent Party to build an effective vehicle for citizen-led grass-roots political action.