Alan Keyes

[Iacobus]

Keyes is down in the polls by over 30 points. He was down by at least 20 points when he 1st came up and never made any headway.

IL is a fun state, of course I am partial. Most of the people are moderate in every sense of the word. I think it was the Sun Times that said when the endorsed Obama that they do not agree with some of his left leaning views and his views on Iraq (note: the same paper endorsed Bush, if I am not mistaken). However, on Keyes they said, "is too far to the right wing to apeal to any IL voters."

Keyes was a mistake by far in a centre of the road state. Maybe they will learn when IL has two Democratic senators.

[immaculata]

What I don't get is... why Illinois? He stands no chance against Democratic Chicago (which should be it's own state anyways )

[immaculata]

A friend of mine emailed this to me.. Sorry I don't have time to remove all the little arrows.

This is part of an article from the Chicago Sun Times (Aug. 22, 2004). I edited the first part to focus more on Alan Keyes faith. I also wanted to shorten it. Jean
>
> ALAN KEYES
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Age: 54
> Raised: Roman Catholic
> Now: Roman Catholic
> Attends: Our Lady of the Visitation in Darnestown, Md., and a parish
> to be announced in Calumet City
> Words to live by: "I rather want people to think God is on their
side,
> because that means they know he's watching them."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Born in a New York military hospital in 1950 while his father was serving
in
> Korea, Keyes describes himself as an "Army brat." Along with his sister
and
> three brothers, he was raised on military bases across the United States,
> and, for a time, in Italy.
>
> His parents, Alison and Gerthina, both now deceased, were converts to
Roman
> Catholicism.
>
> Keyes says his first concept of what God is like is inextricably bound to
> Catholicism.
>
> "My earliest idea that I remember was Jesus Christ, he was my idea of what
> God was like," he says. "When you grow up Catholic, I remember being
> encouraged to think of Jesus as your friend. Just a friend, like the
friends
> you had on the playground, or in school. And I can remember that that was
a
> part of my developing thought life when I was a child, having
conversations
> with Jesus in my head, as if he were one of my playmates. . . . He was a
> child, just like me."
>
> And now what does he think God is like?
>
> "He's grown up," Keyes, who is married with three children, says, busting
> out in a belly laugh. "He's grown up. And I hope, I've grown up a bit. But
I
> think that depth of it hasn't changed. We go through 'times.' We advance,
we
> retreat, we struggle, we wrestle."
>
> Keyes insists his faith has remained fairly constant throughout his life,
> though there were times when he says he felt more distant from his faith
> than he does today.
>
> "I think the Bible is right [when] it says that you raise up a child in
the
> way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it," Keyes
> says, paraphrasing a passage from the 22nd chapter of the Biblical book of
> Proverbs. "That obviously implies -- doesn't it? -- a kind of gap. There's
> something in youth that somehow implies that people do depart from it a
> little bit. But if you raise them in the way they should go, then the
roots
> take over again. And one returns."
>
> When he was a doctoral student in the late 1970s at Harvard working on his
> dissertation about constitutional theory, Keyes says, he struggled a bit
> spiritually.
>
> "When you're a graduate student, you go through your ups and downs and
> sometimes you hit really great lows. Some people, as a result of that,
give
> up and they never reach their degree," he recalls. "At a moment of crisis
> for me -- I'll never forget -- I was feeling just that low, sort of
> thinking, 'I've been working at it and I'm never going to finish and it's
> just hopeless.'
>
> "I called my mom, and that conversation, in which she really did nothing
but
> listen to me and remind me that I'd gotten through different things in my
> life through faith -- sparked an experience I still remember," he says,
his
> voice breaking with emotion. "And it transformed my sense of what my faith
> meant to me."
>
> He received his Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1979. He also earned
his
> undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1972.
>
> Keyes describes a mild crisis of faith that had grown alongside his
> intellectual pursuits.
>
> "In American academics, it's difficult to be a person of faith. There's a
> certain kind of patronizing, a sense of, 'Oh, you'll grow out of it,' " he
> says.
>
> "So you begin to push your faith into the background, and maybe not really
> want to show it and so forth and so on. You start to doubt whether or not
> you are being intellectually honest if you are relying on premises of
> faith."
>
> It's a conundrum Keyes seems to have resolved with a vengeance.
>
> The word became flesh
>
>
>
> Keyes would never make himself out to be some sort of Biblical scholar,
but
> when it comes to Scripture, he knows what he's talking about.
>
> He reads Greek -- he travels with a laptop loaded with Bible software,
> including a copy of the Septuagint, the Greek version of Hebrew
> Scriptures -- and can wax eloquent at length about the etymology of
certain
> words and how they correspond to theological principles.
>
> "I try to read or think about some element of the Bible every day," he
says,
> leaning back in his office chair, and propping his feet up on the desk.
>
> When asked what portion of the Bible he most enjoys reading, he says,
> without hesitation, "Genesis."
>
> "I often tell people that my greatest problem in the Bible is that in any
> serious way I've never been able to get past Genesis," he says, chuckling.
> "Now, I have read the whole Bible and I read other books, but what I mean
is
> the book that I keep going back to over and over again is Genesis.
>
> "For the longest time, I was really going back over and over again,
thinking
> and writing about, the creation myths, because it seemed to me that
there's
> an enormous depth of kind of philosophical implication," he says.
>
> In addition to his Biblical studies, Keyes is a philosophy buff.
>
> "People will think this is strange I suppose, but . . . there are books
like
> Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Hegel's Logic and things like that, and
> every once in a while I get hit by this mood and I have to wrestle with
> these books that are very abstract and that are kind of philosophy in the
> viewless realms where you are really dealing with concepts that have no
> corresponding material images or anything to go along with it," he says,
> excitedly. "You just have to go with pure concepts to think about things.
> And I think, in the sense of that kind of philosophical thinking,
meditation
> and reasoning, Genesis is an enormously powerful experience."
>
> This launches Keyes into a 20-minute discussion of what he describes as
his
> latest "breakthrough" in examining a portion of Biblical text.
>
> Specifically, the candidate says for four or five months he had been
> reading, re-reading and picking apart several dozen verses from the 4th,
5th
> and 6th chapters of Genesis, beginning with one of those "begat" passages.
>
> So and so, son of so and so, begat so and so, father of so and so, who
> begat.. ..
>
> These particular begat passages start with a descendant of Cain, the son
of
> Adam and Eve who murders his brother Abel, and end with Noah -- the fellow
> with the ark.
>
> With an almost childlike enthusiasm, Keyes recounts how he traced the
> lineage of Noah and the descendants of Cain, examined the ancient roots of
> certain words, and learned, according to his interpretation, that God's
> covenant with Noah after the flood included the institution of capital
> punishment for the first time.
>
> "It's fascinating, don't you think?" Keyes asks, smiling broadly, when
he's
> concluded an exegesis of the text that, at least in its methodology, would
> give any seminary professor or preacher a serious run for his money.
>
> A boundless sorrow
>
>
>
> Keyes could be a preacher, a Biblical scholar, or professional apologist
for
> Christ. But instead, he's chosen to enter the secular political realm.
>
> Why choose a field that can so often obfuscate faith?
>
> It's a question, apparently, that moves Keyes to tears.
>
> His eyes turn red, he stops talking for several minutes, stares at the
> ceiling, drums his fingers on the desk, and apologizes for his loss of
> composure.
>
> After several attempts to begin speaking, only to have his voice crack
with
> emotion, Keyes tries again to explain what he's feeling.
>
> "I'm sorry, I'm getting a grip," he says, eyes red with tears. "When I was
> young, I encountered a problem, I guess. A challenge. And I guess it was
an
> encounter that disillusioned me, yes, in the literal sense. And that was
my
> first encounter with the reality -- intellectually and emotionally . . ."
he
> pauses again, his voice trailing off for a few moments. " . . . Of what
the
> slave experience meant to my ancestors. And I think I've been working that
> out ever since.''
>
> When pressed to explain just what this "encounter" was, Keyes reveals that
> it was, in fact, an intellectual incident.
>
> When he was about 15, he read Lerone Bennett's book Before the Mayflower:
A
> History of the Negro in America, 1619-1964. And it broke his heart, he
says.
>
> "It's sorrow," he says, explaining why 40 years later he's still so
> emotional about something he read as a teenager. "It's not a sorrow for
> yourself, it's not a sorrow for individuals, it's a sorrow for the reality
> of our kind of sad experience . . . of life without God."
>
> And it's that sorrow and outrage that in part has led him into politics,
> Keyes says.
>
> "It's a problem of justice and to understand it and resolve it somehow is
> not an intellectual exercise. You have to meet the challenge of it in your
> own time and life. And at some level, that's what politics remains at its
> heart, in America," he explains.
>
> "It's impossible to be a Christian and really live out your relationship
> with God apart from life and action," he says. "And that action requires
> that you kind of be aware of and sensitive to how in fact the injustice
that
> was involved in slavery is like one of those difficult plants where you
cut
> off what appears on the surface but the root is still there. And it
springs
> up again in another place, in what seems like another form, but it is the
> same evil. It's the same root."
>
> Christus victor?
>
>
>
> So, what did he mean, exactly, back at that podium in Arlington Heights,
> when he exclaimed that "the victory is for God"?
>
> Was he saying God is on his side -- the side of the righteous -- and not
on
> that of his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, a man who professes the
same
> Christian faith?
>
> "Well, professing is the operative word," Keyes says, in a moment of
> snarkiness conspicuously absent from the rest of the interview.
>
> "I thought it was pretty clear. Maybe it wasn't," he says, reflecting on
his
> acceptance speech a few days earlier. "What I meant by it was the victory
is
> in God's hands for his will and decision. That's why I couldn't promise it
> to people. I might lose. I don't know. None of us knows.
>
> "The notion that you can stand there and say, 'Rah! We're gonna win!' I
know
> you're supposed to do that, but I find it very difficult to say stuff that
I
> know, even if it's rhetorical, is not true," he says.
>
> Keyes is puzzled by the idea that some people would be afraid of the
notion
> of "God on our side."
>
> "I rather want people to think God is on their side, because that means
they
> know he's watching them, and that his rules still apply to what they do,"
he
> says, smiling. "I hope that's the result."
>
> "I often tell people that my greatest problem in the Bible is that in any
> serious way I've never been able to get past Genesis. Now, I have read the
> whole Bible and I read other books, but what I mean is the book I keep
going
> back to over and over again is Genesis."
>
>