By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Wednesday, U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore spoke to the student body at Tuscaloosa’s American Christian Academy. Moore discussed the sacrifice that America’s veterans have made and the importance of acknowledging God in his keynote speech to the school body in their Veterans Memorial Day Service.
“This is an exciting time in our country, because so many people are turning back to what America is about,” Judge Moore said.
Judge Moore said at the beginning of this assembly, “we said a Pledge to the flag of the United States to ‘One nation under God.’ ‘Under God’ was put in the Pledge after World War II during the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower (R) and they put that in the pledge for a particular reason. It was put in there out of respect for the country and for respect of God. In a lot of countries you can’t go out and protest. We have a right to protest and we should protest when we see a wrong that needs to be addressed; but you shouldn’t do it at a time when you honor the country and those veterans who served the country,” – referring to athletes kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Moore said that you don’t hear a lot of politicians talking about morality. That is because we don’t understand what that means any more. “Right and wrong comes from God. Unless we recognize that we don’t understand where our rights come from.”
“The right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to pursue your happiness,” Moore said. “I am seeking to be a part of the government. Government is here to protect those rights that are granted by God. This is the only country in the world where where our rights come from is written in our founding documents.”
Moore quoted the first lines of the Declaration of Independence: “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. This was taken by Jefferson from Blackstone’s Commentaries. It is the American government under God that we recognize. Without God we would lose those right: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”
“Maybe the tragedies we face in this country today are punishments,” Moore said. “I don’t know that. I am not God; but maybe He has removed his protections in hope that we will turn back to Him.” Moore said that there have been other times in our history when we have turned away from God. The first time was in the years after the Revolution. The Constitution put us back on the path. During the war between the states, at the Battle of Gettysburg, over 50,000 men died in three days. We hear a lot about Pearl Harbor, where 2,800 people died, and that was a serious tragedy; over 3,000 died in the twin towers on 9/11, but 50,000 died in just this one battle. A few months earlier, things looked really bad so the Senate passed a resolution asking President Abraham Lincoln (R) to proclaim a national day of fast and prayer.
Moore quoted from Lincoln’s speech that day: April 30, 1863: “And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
“Lincoln was recognizing then that we in this country needed God and we need God today.” Moore said. “God is the source of our life. When we recognize God we realize why were are here.”
Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Moore also quoted from the Gettysburg Address.
“Someday YOU will be up running for office or raising children or serving in the military or serving in a profession like healthcare or running schools; but what you are learning here at American Christian Academy will serve you in all of the things that you do,” Moore told the student body. “A lot of people don’t get that anymore.”
Speaking of veterans, Moore said, “Those people gave their lives fighting for their country, for their land, and for their God now it is up to you to carry it forward.”
Moore said that he has been married to his wife, Kayla, for 32 years, and they have four children and five grandchildren. “One of my children is in the Army and my son, Caleb, is in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and will be in the Army.”
The American Christian Academy is at 2300 Veterans Memorial Parkway.
Veteran’s Day will be celebrated on Friday, November 10.
The Senate special election will be on Dec. 12, 2017.
