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Are We a Nation of Men… or Slaves? – Episode 063

Anthropologists like to say that if you can find the source of law in a given culture, you can then find that culture’s god. In our own culture, that of the United States, the Judeo-Christian God and His law have been the foundational basis for our Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights, our Constitution, and subsequent laws.

Until we came to the middle of the 20th century, that is. Today we are replacing the transcendent God of the Bible and His established laws with man and his law, and instead of living with clearly defined absolutes that do not change, we have become subject to the capriciousness of law that is determined by whoever carries the biggest stick.

Off The Grid Radio
Ep 063
Released: August 26, 2011

Bill: Welcome everybody. It’s Bill Heid, your host today, with Off the Grid Radio. We’ve got a special edition of Off the Grid News Radio today. We’ve got an old friend of ours who’s back in the news again – it’s former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, Judge Roy Moore – one of my heroes. I’ve got two – I’ll tell you this, Judge Moore, I’ve got two pictures in my den – one of George Washington and one of you. So, welcome.

Judge Moore: Thank you. That’s good company, Bill. Thank you and it’s nice to hear from you again. I hope everything’s going well.

Bill: Thank you very much. This morning I went into a search engine and typed in “Judge Roy Moore” and you popped up with a story that was just minutes old in the Sunshine News, a Florida online news service, so there’s a lot to talk about with you. You’re back in the news again on a couple of different levels. Before we get into some of the things that are happening and some of the issues currently, let’s talk first a little bit about how you grew up. I think a lot of our listeners like the idea of – some people grew up in a more frugal environment and conditions that weren’t rife with materialism and consumerism. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your childhood and how you grew up because I think that fits and resonates so well with some of our off-the-gridders that we’ve got listening.

Judge Moore: I was born in 1947, so that gives you some indication. I remember when I was very young, television was very young. A lot of people didn’t have television. I remember when we first got a television – it was about when I was about the 4th grade. We didn’t have a lot of the modern conveniences. Of course no one had computers or cell phones back then. We had party lines and a lot of young people don’t even remember about party lines. That was an interesting time. We had no secrets back then. Growing up – I grew up in a rural setting. When I was in high school, we didn’t even have indoor plumbing. Now, of course, lots of things have changed. You don’t find houses now without indoor plumbing or things like that but back then it was common. Back then everyone on the county road plowed with mules and turned the ground in the spring. You don’t see many people plowing with mules these days. When I was in high school, my brother and I actually did that. We had a double team of mules – our neighbors – and we plowed the ground. We cut wood with a cross-cut saw, not power saws that we do today, but an old-fashioned way. We used to have to go out in the woods and haul logs back by hand.

Bill: Judge Moore, you didn’t feel you were entitled to horses when you had mules or entitled to a chainsaw when you were using a cross-cut saw or entitled to indoor plumbing?

Judge Moore: We didn’t have the money to buy any of those things. The mules we used were our neighbor’s, the cow we milked was our neighbor’s. We did have a cross-cut saw. But we were happy. Life was seemingly good back then. We didn’t worry about what we didn’t have, we thought about what we did have. Today I think, as you look around with the crime and violence going on and the cruel things that are happening, you wonder if it wasn’t a better time, if people cared more about each other. I remember when I was in high school, I used to hitchhike to school. Part of that was my problem, I wanted to stay in the school that I’d moved from – it was about 16 miles away. I didn’t catch the bus that rode to the school where my siblings went, so I hitchhiked about 16 miles, every morning and every afternoon so I could finish the year in that school. We changed schools quite often back then. I think I went to 12 or so schools in the 12 or more years in school. I changed once – three schools in one year. We changed schools quite often because my dad was a construction worker, moved around. It was just something we had to do. Of course no one likes to change schools and we didn’t back then but … eventually, graduated from high school in Alabama and went to the United States Military Academy and that was a wakeup call because I mixed with people that had far different backgrounds. I spent four years there and then went into the United States Army – I was airborne-trained, went to the mechanized infantry in Europe. Then I was a military police officer as a second lieutenant, first lieutenant. Then, in 1971, went to Vietnam, where I commanded a military police company. After my service in Vietnam, I returned home to Fort Riley, Kansas where I was a battalion staff officer. After I left the regular army, after I’d served my time that you had to serve out of West Point – the United States Military Academy – went into law school at the University of Alabama. Became a Deputy District Attorney. I practiced law for eight years.

Bill: What got you – go back for a second, what got you interested in law? I think that’s a curious thing for me because here you are, you’re on this path and then all of a sudden – like Martin Luther, he was going to be a monk, priest, and all of a sudden – excuse me, he was going to be a lawyer and then all of a sudden something changed. What light bulb went off in your head that made you decide you wanted to be in that field?

Judge Moore: At United States Military Academy I studied the Uniform Code of Military Justice – UCMJ – and I did well at that course. I had a love for law so I went to the military police. Of course in the military police we enforced the law. In Vietnam I was military police company commander. It was a gradual inclination towards law. When I decided to get out of the military, I wanted to try law school. Of course that’s where I went. I did well and graduated and then went to the District Attorney’s office. It was a gradual thing like I think any young people – I’ve got children now, four children – three boys and a girl – I still have one in high school, as a matter of fact, 17, he’s a senior this year, 6’3”, 230 lbs and excellent football player and baseball player and very good grades so he’s got a good future, I think. He doesn’t know what he wants to be and my other son that’s in college, his third year, he’s just gradually inclining toward law but you never can tell where your future will take you. But mine took me into the law and then eventually to a circuit judgeship for eight years and then to Chief Justice of Alabama. Of course that’s where most people …

Bill: That’s where we all picked up on you. At what point did you decide – have you always had the idea that law needed a foundation? In other words …

Judge Moore: No.

Bill: When you went to law school, they probably taught you typical case law and so you were probably inculcated that way. At what point did another light go off and say “wait a second, there’s got to be a foundation for law …”?

Judge Moore: That light went off … God actually caused the light to go off, I guess. I was always fairly religiously oriented. I studied the Bible and, like everybody else, we don’t always live the right life, but I did know the Scriptures. I had gotten into law and some strange things happened. I tried to fight the system to make it better and I failed – well, I didn’t fail making it better, I failed – lost my job. I ran for public office and lost. I had an experience coming back from that … eventually I got into the circuit judgeship, after practicing law for a number of years. I had an occasion to start displaying in my courtroom something I felt important and part of it was the Ten Commandments. That was long before the monument at the Supreme Court. Then I started studying the law, “Blackstone’s Commentaries,” as a matter of fact, which were mentioned in law school. They’re mentioned in law school but people don’t study them because they feel them irrelevant, but they’re highly relevant because everything has to have a foundation. Law has to have a foundation. Even you take the most simple law that you can think of – speeding – there is a statute that says that you violate the law if you speed and of course they pass speed limits. There has to be a foundation to go from, you can’t just have a judge come in the court and say “the officer saw you going along the road and it looked like you were speeding.” You have to go back to the law. The same thing goes for contracts, all kind of law. You have a foundation. Our country was begun on the foundation that God was the source of life, liberty and property as well as pursuit of happiness. English law, in fact, back in the 1700s, thought three basic, inalienable rights were life, liberty and property, because they all originated from a supreme being. This was novel to me and I got into the judgeship and I’d never been introduced to such studies and I started studying and learning. Learning about the source of our Constitution and what it was founded upon. It’s very basic that you have to have a foundation.

Bill: Don’t you think that there’s law – don’t you think, Judge Moore, and I know you’re trying to make this point – we want to cue up and play the clip that we’ve got from your court case in a minute – but don’t you think, if you’re going to have an intelligent conversation with someone, it could be if they’re from the ACLU, it could be from the attorney general that prosecuted you, it could be anyone, but the understanding of law in every culture has to be inescapably religious because it reflects what that culture’s ultimate concerns and commitments are. It naturally reflects what justice is or what right and wrong is. You can’t disestablish religion. You can disestablish Christianity but if those folks push you out, they push something back in, in its place – it’s a law of the universe, it’s inevitable, there’s no neutrality there. Is that – are you on the same page with that?

Judge Moore: Oh, yes. I understand what you’re saying – I don’t know that most people would. They don’t think … but let me give you a concrete example. No one likes to be told what to think and what to believe. I don’t think that’s a general proposition, I think conservatives as well as liberals would say “we don’t like people telling us that we have to believe in this or that.” But generally, where does that right come from? In our system, under our Constitution, under our history of law, it came from a Supreme Being – the obligations we owed to the Supreme Being was between man and God, not between man and government. Now, in the Muslim world, it’s been government because their government directs what you will believe. In our government, it’s free to believe what you want. You can go worship a telephone pole, if that’s what you think is your god, and government can’t tell you otherwise. The reason that exists is because our foundation was built upon the fact that there is a God – a particular god – that gives you that freedom. Therefore, I often say that even liberals should be thanking God, or even atheists should be thanking God, for the right to believe what they want because the foundation of our system was built upon a supreme being giving you that right. For example, you turn to Jefferson’s Bill for Religious Freedom, well aware that the opinions and beliefs of men depend on their own will but following voluntarily the evidence proposed to their minds that almighty God has created the mind free and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint. I could go on – I’m reciting that from the Bill for Religious Freedom but he goes on to explain that God gives you this right and no government can take it from you. That’s not true in Saudi Arabia or Iran. They dictate what you believe. In our system there’s a foundation and that foundation is God and God’s law, from which all morality springs, and all definitions of right and wrong. For example, we have marriage between a man and a woman – why? Because it comes from the history of Christendom and the fact that God created man, woman and united them to procreate. But when you get to another system, they have other religions, other faiths that dictate what you believe and some of them control how you believe and how you worship God.

Bill: Sure. Jeremy, can you cue up – what I’d like to do, Judge Moore, if that’s OK, I’d love to cue up – because a lot of the listeners probably didn’t catch this the first time in 2003 and shortly after that, that you and I met. I’d like to play a little bit of the prosecution piece and then the end. But first, who is the attorney general at the time?

Judge Moore: The attorney general was a republican – Bill Pryor.

Bill: Bill Pryor, one of Bush’s friends, right?

Judge Moore: One of Bush’s friends. He was promoted to the 11th Circuit after he prosecuted my case. There was a direct relationship there. He’s the one cross – he’s still on the 11th Circuit.

Bill: Before we play it, let me preface it again by saying every culture, every society, has its foundation for law. Judge Moore, in this situation, is doing nothing more than what he sees as defending the foundations of the culture that the Founding Fathers gave us. Jeremy, are you ready to play that? Let’s listen.

[Begin recording]

Mr. Pryor: Your understanding is that the federal court ordered that you could not acknowledge God, isn’t that right?

Judge Moore: Yes.

Mr. Pryor: And if you resume your duties as chief justice after this proceeding, you will continue to acknowledge God as you have testified that you would today.

Judge Moore: Absolutely.

Mr. Pryor: No matter what any other official says.

Judge Moore: Absolutely. Without – if I can clarify that, without an acknowledgement of God, I cannot do my duty. I must acknowledge God. It says so in the Constitution of Alabama. It says so in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It says so in everything I’ve read.

Mr. Pryor: The only point I’m trying to clarify, Mr. Chief Justice, is not why but only that in fact if you do resume your duties as Chief Justice, you will continue to do that, without regard to what any other official says. Isn’t that right?

Judge Moore: I will do the same thing this court did in starting with a prayer, that’s an acknowledgement of God. I would do the same thing that justices do when they place their hand on the Bible and say “so help me God.” It’s an acknowledgement of God. The Alabama Supreme Court opens with “God save this State and this Honorable Court.” It’s an acknowledgement of God. My opinions, and I’ve written many opinions, acknowledging God as the moral source of our law. I think you must.

Unknown speaker: During the trial of this matter, Chief Justice maintained his defiance, testifying that he stood by an earlier statement given by him to the judicial inquiry commission in which he stated, in part, “I did what I did because I upheld my oath and that’s what I did. I have no apologies for it, I would do it again.” The Chief Justice showed no signs of contrition for his actions. Because of the magnitude of the decision with regard to sanctions for the Chief Justice’s violation of the canons of judicial ethics, was a difficult one for this court to make. Finding no other viable alternatives, this court hereby orders that Roy S. Moore be removed from his position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. This court is now adjourned. [End recording]

Bill: OK, that probably made me as made again as it did the first time that I heard that. That has to be the most – it’s almost like the insanity party has taken over. You open up something in prayer and then you destroy a man. Judge Moore, help me understand this again.

Judge Moore: Well, I understand it quite well because there’s a great hypocrisy going on and people overlook that hypocrisy and never think much about it. The United States Supreme Court opens with “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” It’s a prayer. They have said so, in Engel v. Vitale in 1962 and in other cases. They’ve said “that’s a supplication of prayer.” Well, if that’s a prayer then why can’t school children pray in school? If the Supreme Court can pray, why can’t children pray in school? If the United States Congress can open with prayer, why can’t children in school say a prayer? The hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another. What that cross examination brought out, it says – because the magnitude of the situation – well, the magnitude was – here was a Chief Justice saying there was a God. Even though every state constitution acknowledges God as the source of freedom, liberty and religious liberty and so forth, you can’t really believe that. In other words, it’s not a matter of law, it’s a matter of the government taking the place of God, and yet using God in the hypocritical fashion, just in the historical manner and the way the ACLU wants them to use God. It is so wrong, it is so illegal, that actually you violate the law, you violate your own constitution – every state constitution including that of Illinois, Alabama, Texas, Florida – you name it – acknowledges God in some sense. Even our law says “in God we Trust” is our national motto. “Under God” is placed in the Pledge of Allegiance by law. So if “so help me God” is used by every official that takes the oath of office, to include Barack Obama. But we forget that it’s a particular God. We’ve been convinced now that you can use it as long as it’s generic and doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t refer to Jesus Christ. If you do that, then even if officials tell you that you can’t, should you? Well of course you should, because that’s our history, that’s our heritage, that’s our law. It doesn’t mean that you have to believe a certain way, that’s up to the individual. But our country was founded upon the fact that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that to secure these rights, governments are created among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Our government was founded to uphold the rights that God gives us, not to take them from us. That’s why the Bill of Rights exists – the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution, the first of which is “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof.” That’s the law they say that prohibits you from acknowledging God and yet if you go back and look at the words that they used, religion was defined by James Madison, by the United States Supreme Court, by every institution back then as the “duties which we owe to the Creator and the manner of discharging it.” If you put that definition into the first part of the first amendment, it’s “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of …” – what? “The duties you owe to the Creator and the manner of discharging it, nor prohibiting the free exercise of …” – what? “The duties you owe to the Creator and the manner of discharging it.” So it’s all about God. It means that government can’t dictate how you worship God and it’s the fact there is a God, but today in courts they don’t want you … that’s what all these religious cases are about, Bill. They’re not about Bibles or crosses or prayers or Ten Commandments, they’re about the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of God. And it reflects back to the days of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius. We told the Hebrew children in Nebuchadnezzar’s case to bow down to the golden idol. They would not. Even if not, they would not obey his commands. Darius told Daniel to issue a decree that no other god would be worshipped for 30 days but the king and of course he threw open his shutters. The reason he did is because he knew the king didn’t have that authority. Of course, you know he was thrown in the lion’s den – you know the story. But the point is, the same thing’s going on today that was going on back then. It’s just a different form. We still acknowledge God, even if officials tell you that you can’t. I did learn one thing about that colloquy, is you don’t want to tell them “I would do it again.” [laughs] You know, courts don’t like – they’re trying to get you to stop doing something that you have a lawful right to do and you say “I’ll do it again” – they don’t like that. So they removed me from office. The strange thing about this – I hope there’s some lawyers listening out there that say “well, you violated the law.” But the point is, if you disobey a court order, you’re brought before the judge that gives you that order and held in contempt but you have the right to show cause why you should not be held in contempt. They didn’t do that in my case. They transferred it from the federal court, from the judge that gave the order, to a state tribunal of selected judges that would not inquire into the lawfulness of the order. They violated the law to get me to stop doing what I have every right to do. The constitution of Alabama says “we establish justice on the basis of God … invoked in the favor and guidance of almighty God to establish justice.” My goodness, to say that you can’t acknowledge the God upon which this nation was founded is ridiculous.

Bill: It’s not only ridiculous, it’s extremely dangerous. Let’s take a moment and unpack it a little bit and try to teach the listeners a little bit about where this leads. I want to go back – even as late as the ‘50s, if you read a book on anthropology, one of the ways that you would find what the professors or the writers of the textbooks would teach you to interpret – let’s say you go to an indigenous tribe, you would say “if you can find the source of law in that culture, you can find that culture’s god.” I think that’s a pretty smart thing. If you can find the source of law – it’s like we’re detectives, right? We’re going to trail it back. We’re like Colombo – asking some questions, trying to trail it back – having a polite conversation with the ACLU and everyone else that wants to think that way. We trail it back but now they displace you and say “we don’t want the Ten Commandments, we don’t want any foundations, any remnant of any biblical law or language in here.” As I said before, it’s being replaced with something, but it’s being replaced with something anthropomorphic. It’s being replaced with man. Judge Moore, if they could say that to you – “you broke the law” – couldn’t … let’s say I was a lieutenant in the German army and Hitler said “kill those Jews,” couldn’t they have tried me and say “you broke the law”? So the point I’m trying to make – and I’d be guilty, “sure, Adolph, I broke your law. I can’t do … I’m not going to kill any Jews.” The difference we have now, you’re appealing to a transcendent idea, something outside of us, like the Founding Fathers. These guys want to replace this with this Aristotelian notion of “everything’s inside this box and it’s man’s law.” When it comes down to man’s law, isn’t it just whoever’s got the biggest stick at some point?

Judge Moore: It’s either man or God, because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God. And neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations, their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re replacing God with man and it’s a secular society …

Bill: But if we just have man’s law, how do we protect Jews, black people, any group? How do we protect these folks if it’s just man’s law? How do you keep … how do we protect them?

Judge Moore: The thing about it is, they don’t end up being protected. They end up being persecuted and that’s exactly what happened in Hitler’s case against the Jews. As a matter of fact, when we went over there, there was a Supreme Court justice – I believe his name was Jackson – they recognized that the German officers had not violated Hitler’s law, they had violated God’s law, and they were prosecuted under that basis that there was a higher law. Yet we’ve forgotten that today and when you forget that, the same results occur in society, that you actually lose your morality and you begin obeying man instead of the higher authority.

Bill: So where are we now? Do you want to talk – I think there’s some contemporary issues – I think you filed a brief recently too, do you want to mention that? You’ve got another case where …

Judge Moore: There’s a case in Ohio, I think you’re mentioning, that we filed a brief before the Supreme Court where a Judge DeWeese, as a matter of fact, put up a Ten Commandments and was ordered to have them down. He came back with a display that illustrated the difference between secular humanism and a belief in God. In other words, you’re under one of the two – you either think there is a God or you are in a society that denies that God. Our society came from a recognition of a sovereign God. That’s encompassed in our Constitution, in our Declaration and in all our laws. I often have this argument with these intellectuals about “there’s no mention of God in the Constitution” – sure there is, if you want to look to the dating of the Constitution or if you want to look to the fact that the blessings given in the Constitution or if you want to look to the very nature of the Constitution, which was separation of powers, checks and balances and things like that – all because it was based on the fallen nature of man, i.e. there was a God, man fell from that God and all he wanted was power. They divided these powers into separate branches with checks and balances on each other, because man was inherently evil and would succumb to power. A just estimate of that love of power and the proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. That was in Washington’s farewell address. In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. It was all about restricting the power of man. They knew it very well; we have forgotten it. That’s the problem today with government, it has no bounds, no restrictions. It’s not going by the Constitution, it’s going by its own predilections and own emotions. They’re not even regarding the Constitution. Take, for example, the bombing of Libya – violates not only the provisions that “Congress shall declare war” in the Constitution, but that the War Powers Clause passed in 1973, after Vietnam, which I served in, restricted the president under the War Powers, under the provisions of the Constitution, from ever doing what they did in Libya. And yet it’s completely ignored today as it was in the past and the republican administrations as well. It’s becoming something that we disregard. It’s very dangerous to disregard that because we wind up doing exactly what the forefathers did not want, is entry into wars at the will of one man, and that’s wrong. No matter who does it.

Bill: Exactly. And you’ve got a nation where post-modernism becomes the prevailing way of doing business. In other words – not here to slam Justice Pryor – but my guess is that when he was attorney general in Alabama – he goes to church like everybody in Alabama goes to church. He sees himself as a Christian. And yet I see, in that case and in hearing him and in hearing someone like Ben Franklin, how would you contrast … Ben Franklin maybe would even call himself a deist, though you and I perhaps know better. Contrast the two people for a second. I think we’re so out of touch that Bill Pryor could say the things that he said to you. I think that Ben Franklin would be aghast at what he said to you.

Judge Moore: Every one of our forefathers would have been aghast. Ben Franklin, particularly, because he had a strong belief in God. He pronounced that belief in many, many different ways, one of which was at the Constitutional Convention when he stood up and made his speech and said “we could not even have a Constitution …” He said something to the effect, in the beginning, when he was talking about the Revolution, he said “In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers that were heard and were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed the frequent instance of a superintending providence in our favor and to that kind providence we now this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future nationalistic …” He went on to say this – “have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need his assistance? I’ve lived, sir, a long time. The longer I live the more convincing proofs I see in this truth, that God governs in the affairs of man.” How can we have forgotten that simple truth? He knew it very well, that God governs in the affairs of man and we’ve forgotten that. I could go on about Benjamin Franklin because I love to quote him. He wrote a letter in Philadelphia in 1787, I think it was, and he ended it by saying things about God that we have completely forgotten. I can’t remember how it starts – “I beg I may not be understood to infer, that our general convention was divinely inspired merely because that Constitution has been so vehemently unreasonably opposed, yet I must own have so much faith in the general government of the world by divine providence that I can hardly conceive of a transaction …”??[0:37:05] I’ve forgotten the rest of it but, anyways, he’s talking about the Constitution in some sense being … well, I’ve forgotten it – my memory’s going here. [laughs]

Bill: But he certainly believed that the Constitution, and maybe even more so than a lot of folks, than some of the more Christian, more self-conscious Christians – he believed that the Constitution was divinely inspired, if you will.

Judge Moore: Absolutely.

Bill: He just said “this just didn’t happen randomly. This thing came down in such a way that this was providence in action.” I get goose bumps just thinking about what he said because you take what many consider to be a deist and you transpose him and put him our world today, he would look like a right-wing extremist – Media Matters? and the ACLU would simply hate his guts.

Judge Moore: I wish I could remember … “yet I must only have so much faith in general government where by divine providence I can hardly conceive the transactions necessary to the welfare of millions now existing … without some degree of being influence, guided and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent ruler in whom all inferior spirits live, move and have their being.” That’s the close of the letter. That’s what he thought about the Constitution. You can’t turn to Ben Franklin, you can’t turn to any of the Founding Fathers – they often point at Jefferson, but it was Jefferson who said “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among those life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They liked to talk and attack Jefferson’s faith but I’ll tell you, he had a belief in God. Whether or not he was a Christian, I’ll leave that to history, but I’ll tell you this – he knew the particular God of the Holy Scriptures. In fact, both he and Franklin originally designed the Great Seal and one of them had Moses leading the Children of Israel through the wilderness. The other had – I can’t remember what the other was – but it was also a Christian example.

Bill: So the Great Seal that they had planned had Moses delivering the People because they saw themselves as a similar people.

Judge Moore: That’s right. It’s just phenomenal that we allow intellectuals to tell us things that don’t exist. 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were a member of Christian Orthodox churches. To say that they didn’t believe in God was … phenomenal. They did. And without which our Constitution would not exist. Washington in his inaugural address, the thing is so filled with references to God, that it occupies the majority of the address. He certainly knew how important God had been to our country.

Bill: And you know right after he got done with that inaugural address he went to church and took communion. We had Dr. Peter Lillback on and was talking about that episode as well. All these people – why they keep beating on that …

Judge Moore: After he got finished with his inaugural address, if you want to know exactly what he did, you go to the congressional record. Along with Congress, the president, the vice president, members of the Senate and House of Representatives proceeded up the street, about seven blocks, in Manhattan, from Federal Hall, to a little church called St. Paul’s Chapel where they entered in and worshiped in front of the Ten Commandments. If you want to doubt that, go to New York City, go down to Manhattan, go to Ground Zero and right beside Ground Zero you find a little church called St. Paul’s Chapel. It has not been restored, it’s been continually used since 1766 – that’s 10 years before the Declaration – as a church. When the Twin Towers fell, not one rock or glass was broken in the chapel. They treated the victims there. We don’t know our history, we don’t even know our present. Presidents have worshipped there as did Washington and the whole first Congress. Right in front is a scene called “Glory,” where the Ten Commandments are shown. You can sit there and see what Washington saw. This is not a restoration. Ask the people, the docents there, that show you around. It sits at the edge of Ground Zero. There’s a history at that chapel that’s so phenomenal and it’s right there, you can see it. Right at the top are the Hebrew letters Yahweh. They weren’t worshipping a generic God. They knew the God of the Holy Scriptures. He went back down and they started. From May to September they debated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. On September 25, 1789, they reached the final words – “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; abridging the freedom of speech or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The first thing they did on that very day, they asked the president to declare a day of Thanksgiving and prayer to almighty God, which he did on October 3, some eight days later, in which he said “whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” Whereas Congress has asked him to do this, he declares a day of public thanksgiving, prayer to God, for “all that is was and will be. For our civil and religious liberty. For the constitutions of the states and the constitution of the Federal government, lately established.” It was all about God. The first presidential proclamation acknowledges it, as did the Congress. It’s in our history and we should know our history.

Bill: The establishment clause in your mind, I think probably similar to mine, is basically just saying there’s not going to be any federal – we’re not going to disestablish the God of Christianity from our culture, our society, our government …

Judge Moore: We’re not going to have an established church.

Bill: However, we just don’t want an Anglican church. This is basically what they were saying because they came from this oppressive situation. “we don’t want bishops coming here, lauding over us” – no pun intended, Bishop Laud – and telling us what to do. But we don’t care if Massachusetts does do that. Massachusetts could quite well do that.

Judge Moore: Just the federal government.

Bill: Just the federal government couldn’t. So it’s not even close to what people think it is.

Judge Moore: Now Massachusetts, along with other states, have disestablished any church. They don’t have an established church and they have adopted basically similar provisions in their constitutions to the federal constitution that says “you can’t tell people how they worship God.” But it doesn’t disestablish God, it doesn’t reject God from our institutions or anything like that. The acknowledgement of God is the basis of the First Amendment and it can’t be prohibited by government and that’s what it was all about in my case. When the federal court told me that – actually, people think it was about the Ten Commandments – the judge’s order says “while the Chief Justice is free to keep whatever religious belief he chooses, the state may not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God and attribute to that God our religious freedom.” In that order, the judge not only violated the law by saying that I could not acknowledge God, he said “or attribute to that God our religious freedom.” Indeed, the United States Supreme Court, in 1931 and 1946, US v. Macintosh, Girard v. United States, respectively, say that our religious liberty comes from the will of God. So he violated the United States Supreme Court case law and yet that’s the way the federal district judges think today – many of them, I don’t like to ever …

Bill: Paint with too broad of a brush.

Judge Moore: … lump all the district judges together. There are some good judges. But we’ve got a lot of liberal influence in our society that is trying to undermine the very foundations of this country and they’re doing a good job at it. People want to build safe houses and safe communities and green spaces and things like this, and they forget that they’ll never have a national morality in exclusion of the religious principle. That’s exactly what Washington said in his farewell address. I like to quote Washington’s farewell address because they used to teach it in school. They used to teach it because he understood what would happen when we become so politicized that we follow parties instead of principle. That’s exactly what’s happening. He knew that of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality to you are indispensible supports. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness – these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.” I could go on but I know that it sounds boring but we need to go back and study our history. Parents and grandparents have that responsibility to teach their children where their nation came from and what it’s been about. If we forget that, then we do not know where we’re going or where we’ve been and we’re lost and wander around in a maze of – depending on whether Barack Obama is president or George Bush – we’ve lost our direction.

Bill: We’ve lost our way. Let’s get into that a little bit because – I don’t know if you know the story, John Calvin was on his way someplace in Switzerland. He wanted to take a reprieve and do a little studying and because of the way the armies were positioned there he ran into William Farel. William Farel asked him what he was up to and he said “I’m going to go take my books and go read and study.” Farel said to him “you know, Johnny C., you’re really needed right now, in this time, in this place.” Forgive me for saying this, but he said “God curse you if you don’t get involved.” The only reason I tell that story, Judge Moore, is that I’m not trying to liken it to exactly what we have today but I think you really are a man – you’re one of the last Christian statesmen that I know of – I have a picture of you in my den for a reason. You’re one of the last Christian statesmen. I think that we need you to run for the presidency of the United States and I think – let me tell you why I think that we need you. I like Ron Paul, don’t get me wrong. Ron’s voted true to what he’s said in and out for years and years and years. But if someone’s going to say to me “I want to end the Fed,” I want a president that can articulate why that’s true. In other words, what is it, just one person’s word against another or would it just be good for some people and not for other people? But there has to be foundations for law and I think you’re the guy that can help us. I know I’m putting you on the spot here but what do you think, man?

Judge Moore: Well, I’m still holding open the option. It’s a limitation on finances and the system is so corrupted with money that it’s hard to get on the stage, quite frankly, without the money. The system is built that way – the political parties are both oriented that way. It’s very difficult without proper finances but God is able and should he open the door I will do what’s called, what I’m called to do.

Bill: We’re interested in that. We’re interested in you.

Judge Moore: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for the compliment. I think you need a person not – I don’t consider myself eloquently disposed – but not just able to say what they believe but to stand for what they believe. I think the political pressures today are to succumb to the money, the power … government’s all about restriction of power, not exercising that power. We’re seeing that greatly in our government today by both the republican and the democrats. They want to ignore the power of the other branches, declaring war, for example. It plainly states that Congress shall declare war. Why do presidents get out there and go in to start wars and put troops under foreign powers and things like this? I can’t understand it. But they’re doing that and getting by with it. Why does the Supreme Court want to make laws? They don’t make laws, Congress makes laws and the Supreme Court interprets those laws and they don’t interpret them according to the foreign laws of France, Germany and the United Kingdom. If they had not done that Lawrence v. Kennedy in 2003, we wouldn’t have the debate over marriage today and we wouldn’t have homosexuality in the military and we wouldn’t have the things that are occurring in our country. And yet the Supreme Court is responsible for going to the laws of France, Germany and the United Kingdom to find a right to commit sodomy. How do I know that? 17 years earlier in 1987, in the case of Bowers v. Hardwick, they said there was no such right in the Constitution. 17 years later they found a right.

Bill: But outside. They didn’t find it from a right inside within our law code.

Judge Moore: That’s right. I think that was 1986 as opposed to 1987, I could have the date wrong. We’ve got to get back to restriction of power and we’ve got to get back to limits on spending – my goodness, this recent debt ceiling being raised is exactly what the majority of people did not want. The majority of people understand you can raise the debt ceiling and you’re going to lower and devalue the money. We’re about to face a terrible financial crisis in the reduction of the value of the dollar. We’ve already sent our foreign manufacturing to foreign countries with these free trade agreements. We need to stop that. We’ve lost manufacturing in this country. I don’t think there’s any state I’ve been in – Illinois is certainly exemplary of this; Detroit, the car manufacturing has gone to China, to Korea and other countries. We developed the cars. Ford Motor Company was the beginning of automobiles. We’ve allowed manufacturing to leave our shores and giving our economic stability to other countries. We’ve got to get some common sense back in the government, back in Washington, DC, and quit this game that we’re playing. It’s going to destroy our country.

Bill: I think, as I said before, Judge Moore, you’re a guy that’ll draw a line in the sand. The whole world has seen you draw that line and stand by it. It takes a man to do that. You are that man and, as we close up here, I’d like to tell people there’s a website, www.roymoore2012.com. There’s a place that you can go read about Judge Moore, you can go to the contact place and tell him you’d be happy to help if he decides to run. You can encourage him, you can encourage him with Scripture, you can encourage him just with your words and let him know, after listening to what he said in that courtroom, that’s proof to you that he’s going to hold his own under a heck of a lot of duress. You want a man like that running the country. Go there, contact him, also go to the donate button. Show him with your tithes and offerings and some sense that this means something to you, that it’s important. We have to get behind somebody that we’re ideologically and foundationally in the same belief system with and the same world view. This is a world view battle. This is one of our heroes in that world view battle. You can also go to Amazon and buy his book “So Help Me God, The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny and the Battle for Religious Freedom,” which is exactly what’s going on in this country, still – from 2003, 2004, that event – through this day. As we close up, Judge Moore, do you have any last comments you’d like to make?

Judge Moore: Thank you, Bill, for the opportunity. We all ought to be concerned about our country and I appreciate you bringing out the past. We have a great history, we are a great people and can be again. It just takes going back to the fundamental principles of the Constitution, the belief in God, belief in each other and love for our country.

Bill: Well stated. I couldn’t have said that any better. I want to thank everybody today, we know it’s important – what your time is worth, we know it’s important, how busy you are. We want to thank you – Judge Moore and I both – for spending some time with us today. Thanks again.

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