By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.)
October 22, 2004
The 2004 Senate race in Illinois between Republican Alan Keyes and Democrat Barack Obama, both black men, is remarkably similar to the Senate race in Illinois between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen Douglas of 1858. Like the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, which involved the moral issue of slavery, the Keyes-Obama debates revolve around moral issues such as abortion and marriage. In Thursday’s debate, in fact, Obama complained that Keyes was “centering his entire campaign around moral issues.”
In 1858 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in the Dred Scott case that the 4 million black people in the United States “whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves” were not citizens “within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.” In fact they were, the Court ruled “articles of property” which the Constitution treated as “persons whom it was morally lawful to deal in as and to hold as slaves.
In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision in Roe v Wade that mirrored the reasoning of the Court in Dred Scott, the Supreme Court declared “the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense” and also are denied the protection of the Constitution. Since that time approximately 44 million unborn babies have been aborted in America. The unborn in America are in effect the “property” of their mothers (but not their fathers) and may be disposed of arbitrarily, as were slaves in the 19th century. This may explain why it is men, not women, in Congress, that have led the fight to protect the unborn from the torture of being literally torn apart in the name of “a woman’s right to choose.”
In September, when Obama had an astounding 45 point lead, Alan Keyes classified Obama's stance on abortion as “the slaveholder’s position.” Chief Justice Robert Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision, was a slaveholder. His decision in the Dred Scott case was an effort to perpetuate the slaveholder’s control over his “property” and, the thought, would end forever the argument over the issue.
The Roe v Wade decision allows women to in effect “own’ their unborn babies and gives them the “right” to dispose of them as “property” if they choose to do so. Obama supports that view.
In 2004, as in 1858, it is the moral issues that divide the electorate. Lincoln warned, quoting the Bible (Mark 3:25) in his June 1858 speech before the Illinois Republican Party Convention:
“'If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”
Ironically, just as the slavery issue reached the Supreme Court, in May of 1857 the American Medical Association appointed a committee to study and report on the frequency of “criminal abortion,”which included any abortion that was not for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. The resulting report called abortion a “general demoralization: and listed 3 causes of it being done: (a) a wide-spread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime, a belief, even among mothers that the fetus is not alive until after quickening; (b) doctors who were “frequently careless of fetal life” and (c) “grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being.
In Thursday’s debate in Springfield, Obama criticized Keyes for waging a “moral crusade” that, in Obama’s opinion was not “helpful.”
Keyes responded by saying:
“What shocked me most when I first got involved in this race, was a line I read in a letter that Senator Obama had sent to Jack Ryan about the issue of debates, in which he said that there was, at stake in the race, no great issue of principle, such as that which had divided Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their famous debates here in Illinois."That showed a decided and total lack of understanding of what is at stake for the people of this state and, indeed, of our nation in issues like abortion, in issues like the defense of traditional marriage. In point of fact, the most important principle of our nation's life--that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by human choice, with our unalienable rights--is at stake in this election, as it was in the great election that was the dividing line between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858.”
In a matter of weeks Alan Keyes has gained a wide grassroots support. Polls show a 20%+ gain for Keyes in some areas of the State with a fraction of the money Obama has spent. Obama had over $9 million on June 30, 2004 and has spent about $8 million. Keyes has raised $1,349,679 in 7 weeks, with over 20,000 contributors.
Alan Keyes accepting the challenge to run against Barack Obama eliminated race as an issue in the 2004 US Senate election in Illinois and the realities of our times have eliminated the notion, introduced by Obama that no “principles” were involved in the 2004 campaign.
Whether Obama and the Democrats like it or not, as was the case in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the unity and moral direction of the nation for the coming decades will be determined by the results of the 2004 election.
And, as George Washington warned In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned Americans, it is that “unity of government” that “is the main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home; your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.”
Those are principles we cannot neglect if we hope to remain a free and prosperous nation.
To Comment: Mary Mostert