Alan Keyes brought his case for returning to what he calls the country's foundational values to Kalispell Friday night.

"America's blessings of liberty have been pretty consistent through history," said the 11-year veteran of the U.S. State Department and former ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council under President Reagan.

"We have been a people with a heart to rise to the occasion," he said. "(We must) continue to be that hope."

The two-time presidential candidate and three-time Senate candidate in Maryland and Illinois addressed more than 300 gathered at the Christian Center for a dinner and speech organized by Stillwater Christian School.

Blending sermon, motivational speech and history lesson, Keyes urged the crowd to uphold what he said was the original intent of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Support for their foundational belief in God has been eroding for decades, he warned.

"We must find what it takes to rebuild, retake and restore what America is," he said.

Keyes ridculed the concept of a Constitutional separation of church and state.

"It forbids the establishment, that's it," he said, citing the First Amendment's wording, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …"

Since Congress, as the nation's sole law-making body, cannot deal with it and the Constitution, as the only other law-making authority, does not address it, religion is off-limits, Keyes suggested. Thus, bans on prayer in school, the banishment of Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments in the courthouse and other prohibitions are invalid, Keyes asserted.

"This ridiculous, absurd, baseless, groundless doctrine now governs what we can do," he said. "This whole notion of separation has given them the (right) to assault our (beliefs).

"People came to America to escape the tyranny of laws that restrict their exercise of religion … And today they are knocking away at the foundations of liberty."

Keyes urged Christians to stand up for a return to what he called the nation's original principals.

"If we live in a country where the idea of justice and property come from God, the people and the law respect those rights," he said.

"Who will defend the authority of God? It will only be the people who acknowledge the existence of God … who seek to live after God.

"Laws reflect on the type of people that are self-governing," he said. "Self-government is only possible in the streets … and in society if it exists first in the heart."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com