I recently published an article to explain, with sound reasoning, my unwavering support for the campaign to elect Judge Roy Moore to represent Alabama in the United States Senate. This despite the reprehensible calumnies The Washington Post contrived to defame him.
As I note in that article, the accusation initially brought against Roy Moore came from one accuser, who alleges criminal sexual misconduct. The article includes statements from three other witnesses, who reportedly said that no sexual advances of any kind were involved in Roy Moore’s alleged interest in dating them — nearly 40 years ago. Even if these statement about his interest are factual (and this remains to be substantiated) their testimony plainly does not corroborate the allegation that he was on the prowl for intimate sexual contact. Yet this is how it is being misrepresented in the effort to defame him.
Now, the Bible reports that the false witnesses found to testify against Christ proved useless, because their statements did not agree. (Mark 14:56) In The Washington Post’s account, the three women agree that Roy Moore’s alleged interest did not involve improper sexual advances. Only one woman in not in agreement, and that is the one who alleges criminal misbehavior. Yet her testimony is now widely portrayed as corroborated by “multiple” witnesses. This simply isn’t so.
Common sense inclines me to suspect that the powers-that-be in control of The Washington Post and other such anti-Christian/anti-conservative media were acutely aware of this weakness in the case they first brought forward. However, they are counting on the fact that unobservant people will accept the deceitful impression that the first accusation has been corroborated by others. Then, as if on cue, another accuser steps forward, charging some even more vile behavior. This second charge will be received without skeptical investigation because of the credibility widely accorded to the first charge. The first charge was given credibility on account of the reported corroboration of “multiple” witness. But, that impression of corroboration is false.
Thus, a chain of uncorroborated statements gains unmerited credibility, even though no link in that chain has enough evidentiary value to lend it credence. It’s rather like the way one dollar can do the work of several if it moves quickly enough through the banking system. The first charge is insufficient to prove any criminal action or intent. No matter how quickly credit is given to new charges on account of it, the charge itself remains without adequate corroboration. Yet it, it gains weight as a weapon for use against the accused the more quickly and widely it is disseminated.
The whole process provides the excuse for a false assumption of guilt, which in turn, allows new calumniators to pile on. This growing mob hammers the accused character to death, even though the whole reprehensible process depends on nothing more than a steady barrage of unproven allegations, and purposeful misconstructions. As far as the charges are concerned, they may all be outright lies.
This polluted stream of unproven allegations is unlikely to be cleared up in the little space of time left before the election takes place. This is precisely what those behind the strategy of character assassination are counting on. It is designed to infect public opinion with the virulent assumption that Roy Moore must be urgently condemned as a sexual predator, regardless of evidence or the conspicuous lack thereof.
Truth would require no such shrewd contrivances to validate its claims. True justice would tolerate no such rush to judgment and execution. But both are characteristic of the way wicked deceivers go about inducing people to lynch an innocent person. They know the truth will out, so they hurry things along before it does. Meanwhile they fill the time with new allegations, demanding that they have no burden of proof because “the presumption of innocence doesn’t apply to elections.” But, in a republic, every jury trial is an election. Thus, the elitist faction attack on Roy Moore intimates their intention to remove that presumption, once and for all, from the requirements for fair trials in America.
People who profess to have the mind of Christ in them need to remember that, for those who trust in Him, God’s word is the gold standard for discerning truth from falsehood. But the Scripture that tells us so, also tells us that God’s Word appeared, Incarnate, in the fleshly body, speech and deeds of Jesus Christ. Trusting that their faith in Christ allows Christian people to be reborn in Him, they know that, when they do, His mind, goodwill, and love for God become their mind, goodwill and love for God, and for their neighbors. When someone professing that rebirth has lived in good faith, he or she bears good fruit, because they discover in the way they live their lives, the Godly life that Christ exemplifies.
So, when faced with conflicting testimony, are Christians to trust words written in the Washington Post (or any other anti-Christ medium) or the evidence of Christ’s living presence, seen in others by the light of God’s Scriptures, and confirmed in their fruitful lives as Christ-followers, upholding the authority of God in Christ, even though they must suffer for it?
Because he thus bears faithful witness to God and His Son, Roy Moore’s life has seen no shortage of God- and Christ-hating slanderers, hurling calumnies to destroy him. Yet he perseveres, as did Christ when he was falsely accused. Moore never wavers in his firm stand for God’s truth. Doesn’t this evidence of Christ within him vouchsafe that his word is good; and better to be trusted than the slanderous contrivances of the forces that seek to destroy him.
They hate him precisely because he adamantly bears witness to God’s authority over human affairs, just as the signers of America’s Declaration of Independence. They hate and seek to bury him in lies, because they seek to bury the self-evident truth of justice and God-endowed rights, including liberty. They greatly fear the prospect of even one clarion voice, raised with no uncertainty, in the U.S. Senate. For they suspect that it might be the signal that revives the true and God-inspired confidence of the American people. And they know that such a revival would doom their deeply corrupt political empires. Pray God voters of good faith in Alabama know it too, and will vote to make it so.
Alan Keyes is a political activist, a prolific writer and a former diplomat.