Ever since we first published the "Pledge for America's Revival" — drafted by leaders of We Need Alan Keyes for President, with input from Alan — we've felt the need to "tweak" it occasionally to reflect well-reasoned comments and suggestions we've received from supporters.

Typically, feedback has centered in the pledge's original length ("way too long"); its focus on mechanics ("find five people" and "donate five dollars"); its implicit arm-twisting (the original language seemed too much like a "contract," some told us); its disregard for individual capacity and circumstances; and the biblical prohibition against "swearing."

Eventually, we felt that the best way to define the pledge would be to emphasize a statement Alan wrote a few weeks after the pledge was introduced — a statement we placed at the top of the pledge to summarize it. It says,

The pledge is a promise, made with God as our witness and on the strength of our given word, to make our best effort to achieve the purposes of America's Revival, in ways that are within our own individual realm and reach.

With this statement as our guide, we've worked off and on to simplify, refine, and improve the pledge, without destroying its basic essence.

Ultimately, we also came to feel that, if the pledge was to have enduring meaning as the rallying cry for a national grassroots movement on a scale suggested by the term America's Revival, it should center almost exclusively in ideals, principles, and broad purposes — those that define America's Revival itself — and avoid focusing on personalities. To quote Alan, as he has stressed repeatedly throughout his campaign, "This isn't about me. It's about America's Revival and the principles it defines for our nation's survival."

This view is consistent with American tradition. As Americans, we're accustomed to "pledging" ourselves to a cause or a set of ideals (such as those in the Pledge of Allegiance), but not to a person. We might support or follow a person, but we don't usually "pledge" ourselves to that person. We therefore think the Pledge for America's Revival should do what its name implies — give us the opportunity to pledge ourselves to the cause of saving our country, upon God-inspired principles, as we work in behalf of exceptional candidates like Alan Keyes.

Note that the pledge itself still makes allowance for supporting individual candidates, by stating, "I therefore pledge to stand with likeminded Americans in advancing this cause" — but its emphasis is on taking initiative to lead out as a grassroots activist in replicating the work and message of someone like Alan Keyes — not merely "supporting" him or any other candidate.

This emphasis on individual activism mirrors the following words from the pledge's introduction (words derived from Alan's own statements):

Our country . . . needs citizens who understand their vocation as participants in the political process — not merely spectators. We are counting on you to make a difference, of your own initiative, in preserving our republic.

It also reflects what Alan told those around him at the outset of the 2008 election: that it ultimately wouldn't matter who became president if the grassroots didn't at the same time rise up and reclaim our country by independent-minded action.

All this would suggest that the real goal in politics is not to win elections, per se, in behalf of a particular candidate — no matter how good he or she is — but to mobilize likeminded citizens to make a difference in their own right, at every step in the electoral process, through their exercise of true self-governance. That's how we'll save our country.

In Alan's words, "Every citizen a leader."