In the aftermath of Sen. Arlen Specter's switch from Republican to Democrat, here's the real lesson, as Alan Keyes sees it:

Arlen Specter has ended the charade of his association with the Republicans in a way that highlights the long charade of the GOP's association with conservative views and principles. Specter and the Steele Republicans have one thing in common -- their passion for power.

What if conservatives were as single-minded in their devotion to the Constitution and the moral principles that underlie America's liberty, strength and prosperity? I suspect that if conservatives ceased to hang their hopes on the false promises of a party obsessed with pleasing its opposite number, they would finally realize their true strength at the polls. . . . 

I attended several "tea party" events last month. Apart from the large turnouts, I noticed that the prevalent concern among the crowds wasn't with partisan victory, or even with their own economic situation. It was concern about the survival of the American Constitution and American liberty. Millions of Americans realize that socialist economics, pervasive government control and rampant greed and self-indulgence are inconsistent with our survival as a free people. . . .

Some conservatives think they can fix the Republican Party. However, the events of the past 20 years suggest that they are more likely to be manipulated by unprincipled Republican power addicts just looking for their next fix. . . .

Just as grass-roots Americans came together for the tea party events, we must now work together to create an ongoing vehicle for citizen action that puts the people back in charge of this nation's political affairs.

We must resolve to be the creators of representation whose only ambition is to serve and preserve American liberty. By so doing we will renew the effective foundations of the government of, by and for the people that we are duty bound to pass on to our offspring.

The intellectual and practical basis for freedom and dignity across the whole of life is laid out for us in the Declaration, the U.S. Constitution, the Founders' Vision, and the verifiable information we have from our true Creator in the Judeo-Christian worldview.

The Democatic Party is single-mindedly in the grip of a secularism that rejects the Founding Vision. And the Republicans -- not all of them, but generally as a party -- seem also to reject that Founding Vision but live with a guilty conscience that has a memory of the way things, including poltical and governmental things, ought to be. We may not have time to wait for these folks to shape up.

Whether inside or outside current political vehicles, the way forward is that of progress based on a clearly articulated and agreed-upon vision rooted in that Founding mission statement as set forth in the Declaration, the Constitution, the Founding Vision, and then the information we have from the Creator. That's the DNA of American Exceptionalism.

What is needed at this critical moment in history? A cultural movement combined with a political vehicle of authentic public servants willing to pledge their sacred honor in the articulate advance of freedom and dignity over against an increasingly inhumane Washington-centric tyranny.

The DNA is there. But freedom is not self-actualizing. It's up to human beings, empowered and then endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," to act, to organize, to work, to pray, as whole and loving and liberated people, across the whole of life. The field is there. It's time to plow.