Among these are the families that remained in Bethlehem, grieving over the sacrifice of innocent children, killed at Herod's command.
This Christmas has been indelibly marked by the events of Sept. 11, and the ongoing struggle against terrorism. Yet it is not these evils which the slaughter of innocents at the first Christmas should most bring to mind. A greater grief than international terror afflicts us, because our children, who are the future of America, remain under savage assault both within the womb and during their most vulnerable early years.
Abortion deaths – over 1.5 million per year – continue to dwarf American deaths by all other causes. Compare death by abortion to all types of cardiovascular disease (about 950,000) and all types of cancer (530,000) combined. AIDS kills 44,000, motor vehicle accidents 42,000, and homicide a “mere” 26,000. If we are reminded by the Christmas story to lament the death of the innocent at the hands of evil, surely it is the slaughtered unborn that command our attention, both in quantity and in the evil of their destruction.
We should grieve over abortion's wholesale slaughter of innocent life, and even more so over our national callousness toward those deaths. This terrible indifference has now extended to nascent human life in America's scientific and medical laboratories, and the treatment of the elderly and infirm. God alone knows how He will judge us as a people – but, as Thomas Jefferson said of slavery, I tremble for my nation when I remember that God is just.
In the Christmas story, Herod was a terrorist, slaughtering the innocents of Bethlehem. And everyone is horrified at this evil action – just as at the evil actions of Sept. 11. But there is no corresponding horror at the destruction of our own children by Americans.
Which leads me to the long journey ahead of us as Americans. We proceed in faith. And like Mary and Joseph leaving Bethlehem, we can see the next steps on the journey, but not exactly how – or when – we can return “home” to Nazareth. But also like them, our country must keep faith in God's guidance, direction and ever-present help.
We must “go back” to go forward. We cannot stand where we are as a people and think we will be safe. We must return to the fundamental principles upon which our nation was built. And we must instill those truths in our young people from the earliest age.
The Declaration of Independence is our national proclamation of these truths, which used to be taken for granted by every decent American. A few quotations from recent presidents can remind us how thoroughly grounded were all Americans – regardless of political party or partisan allegiances – in the very same Declaration principles we now fight so desperately to re-instill.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism.”
John F. Kennedy: “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
This uniquely American perspective – once so universally accepted in our land – is almost unknown to the present generation of children. It is deeply tragic and ironic that even while terrorists attack our nation from without, rabid secularists undermine it from within. More and more we deny the human equality of infants in the womb, the aged, the ill, and the rest of the apparently least among us. Thus we destroy the God-given foundations for decent family life and responsible self-government.
We can destroy terrorism militarily and financially, yet lose. We will lose if our children and their children no longer know the truths that were so self-evident to our founders and to all Americans as recently as the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy. There is nothing more urgent before this nation than reintroducing the fundamental American principles of the Declaration of Independence into our common life.
Many of our brethren are lost in a wilderness of doubt and error, and will joyfully follow the confident leadership of fellow citizens willing to remind them of the truth. May God grant us the wisdom, the courage and the humility to recognize, choose and persevere upon the path that will lead us home.
(Dr. Keyes is founder and chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles.)
