Serious Perseverance
by Carl V. Bibeau

There’s a story told by the comedian Richard Lewis, whose comic persona is based on neurosis. It goes something like this:

“I aspire to greatness, but any organization who agrees to accept me for membership, I begin to doubt their reputation. After all, if they’re willing to let me into the club, their standards must not be very high.”

Many have accused Alan Keyes of not being a serious candidate for the Presidency in 2008.

“He didn’t enter the race soon enough.”
“He’s run too many times already without success.”
“If the majority wanted him for President, they’d have already elected him.”

Can any of these statements pass muster for common sense, let alone wisdom? This calendar year alone, Dr. Alan Keyes has endured the indifference of his life-long Republican colleagues and the rejection of the Constitution Party after THEY had courted HIM to seek their third party nomination. Yet, instead of compromising his long-held Declaration Principles, he did not capitulate in return for advancement. He did not drop out of the race, entertain any understandable resentment, or give up and endorse John McCain or Chuck (who?) Baldwin.

Let us remember that John McCain has been mouthing sound bites from the Declaration of Independence while holding opposite beliefs. Senator McCain, though characterizing himself as Pro-Life, makes a distinction between innocent human life conceived through the crimes of rape or incest and the rest of humanity. Apparently, he does NOT “hold these truths to be self-evident.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama, though characterizing himself as a Christian, unashamedly would allow full term babies to be brain-suctioned, or allowed to expire without rudimentary nurturing, merely for the subjective criterion of “wantedness.”

As the electorate, We the People, grow more cynical with each passing election cycle, as we long for candidates who do not pander, flip-flop or outright lie to obtain our vote. Yet, we have so little self-respect and/or self-esteem that we gravitate toward those very candidates who employ the most cutting-edge polling instruments in order to tell us what we want to hear. Time and again, we manage to tune out the better angels of our nature that are telling us what we NEED to hear.

We are worthy of forthright consistency. We are worthy of a leader who exemplifies the statesmanship that George Washington gave to his country. We are worthy of a President who offers REAL hope that we are still keepers of that shining city on a hill. We may not be worthy to belong to any elite club that would accept someone with our background for membership, but by God’s Grace and through His Sovereignty, the United States is just such a club.

After the longest campaign season for any elected office in the history of our nation, the apparent nominees in our two-party system, are the most indistinguishable from each other ever! But Alan Keyes is managing, through the perseverance of a grassroots groundswell, to remain a true conservative choice come November, as an Independent who appears on the ballot in your state. It has already happened in Colorado. The press release in the previous blog entry indicates that he will be on California’s November ballot, occupying the ballot line of the American Independent Party of California.

Won’t you consider being a part of the bandwagon’s pit crew, or even taking a shift holding the reins, as it takes a lap around the country en route to your state?

The only other President with “Independent” listed after his name in our nation’s archives is George Washington. Isn’t it fitting that this grassroots effort is using the words from that great commander-in-chief’s Farewell Address as a mission statement for this citizen mandate?

“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair;
the rest is in the hands of God.”

U. S. President Alan Lee Keyes, Independent