Alan Keyes
December 1, 1999

Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Let me begin by saying what a special privilege it is for me to be here today, and to share a few thoughts with some fellow Americans.

Now, I understand that under the banner of the Republican Jewish Coalition it is to be expected that I would spend time speaking to you as if you were merely a special interest group. But you see, I know better. I know better, because I understand that what generally draws people to the banner of the Republican Party is not the promise that we will simply satisfy some narrow special interest of their own, but the promise that we will stand forthrightly for those ideas and values and principles that reflect our common heart as Americans and our common commitment to fulfill the important destiny that I think America represents in the world. [applause]

And that's what I want to speak to you about today, but after a fashion that I guess may be a little unusual, because I guess I have an unusual sense of what that's going to take.

We are right now in the midst of some pretty good times in America. I realize that it may not be altogether fashionable for Republicans to point that out, since at the moment, as we face the task of trying to unseat the Democrats from the White House, I suppose it might be advisable for us to do what they tried to do in 1988, and go forward to the American people pretending that there is some awful difficulty we face in economic life or international affairs. But I've got to tell you, their lies about that didn't do them much good in 1988, and if we try lying about that, it's not going to do us much good now.

In economic terms, there are a whole bunch of reasons for acknowledging that people in this country don't have a whole lot of reason to complain at the moment. The stock market's up, inflation is down, unemployment is down. But all the indicators that you want to look at--we're still in pretty good shape, and we promise to be in reasonably good shape between now and the next election. That's why, when they take all these surveys now, the reasonably open-ended ones--which are the only ones I actually think reflect much in the way of real thinking--[indicate that] most Americans are not going to put some deep economic concern at the top of the agenda, because they know better.

They're also not liable to put some deep concern with the international situation at the top of the agenda--though it seems to me, if they really understood what has been going on in the Clinton administration for the last several years, they would actually be quaking in their boots at the prospect of the chickens coming home to roost for the consistent betrayals of American interests that this administration represents.

But they are not paying attention, and why should they, because the chickens won't come home to roost. They're not coming home to roost today, and they won't come home to roost between now and the next election. And, sad to say, that probably means we're not going to have an election in which concern with national security and international affairs will be the turning point and lynch pin of our electoral politics.

We don't have an international crisis, not now, with our young people coming home in body bags and America humiliated, as we were, for instance, in the Iranian business at the end of the Carter years. No, and we don't have a big economic problem. See, Jimmy Carter had a real problem when he was running for reelection, because we had an economic malaise and we were deeply humiliated internationally.

Americans are liable to kick you out as the party in control of the White House if you let either of those problems go bad. When you let both of them go bad, you're really gone.

But for all, what I believe are probable and egregious faults in these areas, you and I both know that the facts don't warrant right now the sense that you kick the Democrats out of control of the White House because of some economic problem or some international problem.

There is a reason, though, why it is absolutely critical to the future of the country that they go. But it's not a reason I suppose that a lot of people want to look at as squarely as we ought to, because it's one that doesn't just put Democrats in the dark; it's one that confronts us as a people with the need to examine our own choices and our own character and our own principles.

For, we have, in the course of the last several years, seen absolutely clear evidence that we are in the midst of the greatest moral crisis that our nation has ever experienced, and that that crisis of our moral principles, conscience, character and foundation has already begun to lay waste to the integrity of our most important national institutions. That is the real lesson of the Clinton administration: a crisis that is not just the result of his shamelessness and his lack of conscience and his lying and his lack of character, but that reflects the fact that, as a people, we have let our standards slip; that, as a people, we no longer understand the relationship between moral decency and freedom! [applause] Having forgotten this truth, we are already domestically suffering the consequences.

But in the context of this audience today, I don't think it would be hard for me either to remind people that there are other areas in which we're likely to have to call upon a sense of moral character and principle, because we always have had to do so.

I point out, for instance, that through the course of the 1970s, and certainly through the Carter years, you will recall that we had a terrible crisis of international affairs, and people actually were writing and talking as if the Soviet Union was somehow going to triumph over America. And we faced crises in all different sorts of regions, and it looked as if we were being pushed back in various ways in the wake of Vietnam and other things.

What did it take to turn that around and to put is in a position where, by the end of the '80s, it was clear that the Soviet Union was no more, that we had won that historic confrontation with global communism? Do you know what it took? It took something that the liberal media didn't want to hear, and that the Democrats ridiculed, and that even some on the Republican side felt was not sufficiently sophisticated. It took a President who was willing to stand before the world and define that confrontation in moral terms, an understanding that the Soviet Union was the focus of evil in the modern world, and that we had an obligation to oppose and make headway against it.

It was when we understood the moral nature of the challenge that we faced that we were able to rally the American people to policies that reflected the required firmness and commitment to win that battle.

See, the secret that we often forget--we pretend to be such a practical, pragmatic people. The truth is that our very identity is defined in terms of our moral principles. And we are a people that has never, in our history, accomplished anything great except we were challenged in moral terms.

We are also a people that in many ways has been willing to commit ourselves to the great battles of this century's history, in spite of the fact that, in concrete terms of interest, there might have been some other way to handle the situation that would have been more immediately profitable for ourselves.

But we didn't take that approach. We didn't take that approach because we are a people that does respond to moral challenges. We are a people that is willing to risk our life and livelihood on far-flung foreign battlefields because some enlightened leader will stand before us persuade us that it is right.

That was important in the way in which we stood in the battles against communism and Nazism and [inaudible], but it's also important, as I am sure all of you understand, in the way in which we approach critical issues in the world today, including the issue of what we shall do in pursuit of Middle East peace and how we shall stand in our relations with a country like Israel.

I long ago realized in the little knowledge that I acquired in my time in foreign affairs of Middle Eastern politics--and I'll acknowledge I didn't go into the Foreign Service with the intention of becoming an expert on the Middle East, but some of you will realize that if you attend enough UN meetings, you end up becoming an expert on the Middle East, because every time we turned around during the Reagan years when I was serving, the folks were using every forum under the sun as a vehicle for attacking Israel and attacking the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

I was supposed to be the ambassador on economic and social issues, and I became the resident expert, it seemed, on fighting the battle to defend America's policy toward the Middle East and America's relationship with Israel. Because in those days, it was understood that one of the big aims of the propaganda war was to undermine that relationship.

And in the course of having to mount those defenses at the population conference and the UNVP and all the other places I had to participate in, what I discovered was that you didn't understand the nature of our relationship and commitment to Israel and in the Middle East until you realized that, at the heart of it, it is not a matter of real politic, it is not a matter of simple calculation of the odds, it is not a matter of the usual hard-minded political thinking. You know what it's a matter of at the end of the day?

That relationship with Israel reflects a moral truth about who we are in the world, and what we are willing to stand for. And it shows that we are not going to make subservient to calculations of money and interests our understanding that we shall always stand four-square with the people who stand on the front lines of freedom and representative government, wherever they stand in the world, and especially if they stand with the courage and integrity of Israel. [applause] That's the truth of it.

But tell me, how long do you think we're going to maintain the ability to respect that kind of an essentially moral commitment in our foreign policy, if we become a people that has no respect for the moral commitments that we owe to ourselves and to our future?

It's not going to happen.

And I think that the greatest danger we face today is that, in fact, we have already embarked, we are way down the road of abandoning those moral principles which are supposed to guarantee to us and to our future the liberties that we cherish as a people and that we hold up as the better destiny of the world.

We do it because we don't like remembering anymore the things we're supposed to believe. It's inconvenient, given the policies we've adopted. Who wants to quote from a Declaration of Independence that tells us our rights come from the Creator, when we have forbidden our teachers in the schools even to mention the word? Who wants to recall that all our claims to liberty and legitimacy as a free people rest on the premise that our rights should be exercised with respect for the authority of the Creator, when we have practically expunged the very concept from our vocabulary?

And who wants to be reminded of the preamble to our Constitution, a preamble that over the course of time has been taken very seriously as part of the constitutional document? It's used in the courts to understand and interpret what are the goals and purposes of government, and by implication to read out what are the necessary powers to achieve those goals and purposes. The phrases "to promote the general welfare and ensure domestic tranquillity" ring down through the pages of our legal literature, providing guidance for the courts as they go about their business of understanding the provisions that our Founders made for our frame of government.

But then there is that inconvenient one that comes toward the end. Does anybody remember this, or am I the only one in the country who still does? See, because the culminating purpose of our Constitution is to "secure the blessings of liberty." Right? Am I wrong about that? But to whom? "To ourselves and our posterity."

Whoa. What that proves is that statesmen wrote the Constitution. Politicians are people who think about today, and who stand before the people of this country acting as if our only role is to pander to what you want and what you need and what you think we ought to have. I'm here to tell you differently.

According to that constitutional document, standing equal with ourselves under the protection and as the purpose of the goal of our Constitution are those who do not yet walk our streets, are those who do not yet feel the sunlight of our sun or of our liberty, are those who have not yet been born and to whom we have an obligation as a people to respect the needs that they will have and to act in such a way that this country's great institutions will not be destroyed for them.

And the Constitution puts them on an equal level with ourselves. "To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Ah, but I understand this is not something we want to hear these days. But after all, what does the word "posterity" mean? Well, "those who will come after us." What does the word "posterity" mean? You go back, and the Founders used phrases like "generations yet unborn."

That's a particularly embarrassing one these days, isn't it? Because, of course, a phrase like "generations yet unborn" will mean people who will walk the streets of Washington and New York and Los Angeles in 2030 and 2050 and 2099, right? Well, they also mean the folks who haven't yet gotten here but will walk the streets of Washington in the year 2004, don't they?

They also mean the folks who haven't yet gotten here and will walk the streets of Washington in December of the year 2000. See, what we don't want to think about is that the word "posterity" also refers to those who will walk the streets of Washington, but who haven't gotten here yet. And will not front the world with their initial cries until maybe the first of January of the year 2000, but who are right now sleeping in their mother's wombs.

What we don't want to think about when we confront our heritage is the tough question I will put to you today. How on earth is it compatible with the goal of securing the blessings of liberty to our posterity that we could sanction the killing of our near posterity in the womb? That's a tough one.

We won't be able to get around that one. It is the proof positive that whether we think in terms of our Declaration principles or our explicit constitutional commitments, we are today under the forms of law, by virtues of decisions taken by our Supreme Court, and sadly, carried out now all over the land. We are in contradiction with our most fundamental principles. We spit upon our most important heritage. We turn our backs on those ideas that constitute the basis of our moral character and our moral decency.

We cannot escape the consequences of this betrayal. And the fact that we persist in it eats every day away at our integrity, at our conscience, at our moral self-confidence. And that has very real and practical consequences. See, because moral self-confidence is part of what is needed to sustain your claim to liberty. It is very hard to sustain the claim to rights and liberty if you feel like you're not decent enough to use it well.

If you think you're a people so depraved and so immoral that you will not care about or meet your moral obligations, then you will extensively and intensively surrender more and more of your liberty to whatever power you think will control your worst impulses. And that, as we know, is on offer every day from our liberal colleagues in the Democrat Party; it is the power of government.

They stand before us, and every day they say, "You can't have back more control of your money. We can't give you control of the schools. We can't actually recognize the initiative and rights of the American people to make their own decisions and control their own destinies in family and business and community, because you won't do what's right. And because you won't do what's right, the babies will starve and the elderly won't be taken care of and the neighbors in need will go without help."

The premise of all liberalism is that we are a people too depraved to be trusted with our freedom, to selfish and to self-indulgent to be respected in our rights.

And that premise grows in power every day, because we have turned our back on the principles that, in fact, guarantee the integrity of our conscience and behavior.

This is the real crisis that we are facing as a people. And this crisis will, eventually, if we do not resolve it rightly, destroy the confidence we need to hold on to our freedoms at home, and destroy the confidence we need to defend those freedoms abroad. Including, by the way, the moral sense that will be required to stand firm, as we have done in the past, even against the world when they seek to destroy our partnership with other countries in the world, like the state of Israel, that stand, too, as a tribute to human self-government and liberty.

If we do not address this moral crisis now and rightly, we will not just lose a little, we will lose it all, and so will all those others who depend on our strength and confidence in this world.

I hope that, as a people, in the upcoming election we'll think about this. Because I know that right now we have the temptation in some circles to just run along after these happy-faced politicians who want us to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there's nothing wrong with America. Mr. Bush may not appreciate it that folks like myself are willing to talk, as he puts it, about "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," but I've got to take that criticism seriously, because I actually think if I'm giving you the impression that I think America is slouching toward Gomorrah, then he is right to criticize me. I don't think America is slouching toward Gomorrah. I think America is galloping toward Gomorrah!

Indeed, I think America is, by now, probably galloping around the town square in Gomorrah. And I think we'd better wake up and begin to take seriously that this is not a condition in which freedom can long survive.

And that means that when you go to the polls this next time around--in the primaries, in the general election, you'll have so many of them standing before you acting as if the only thing that matters is what they're going to do for you. I would like you to read our great Declaration and to read our Constitution, and remember. As citizens of this country, we have rights, but we also have obligations--and one of those obligations is to our future. One of those obligations is that we should use our votes and our opportunities in such a way that the institutions of hope and freedom that were handed on to us to be improved are not destroyed by us before our children and their children's children have the chance to improve upon them.

Act in the light of that responsibility, and I will certainly be willing to take my chances with your choice.

Thank you very much.

[applause]

Thank you. Appreciate it. So I left a few minutes for a few questions, if there are any.

Keyes: Yes.

Question: Do you believe in equal rights for all citizens, civil rights for [inaudible] . . .?

Keyes: Yes.

Question: Then what would you do or can you do or will you do to see that disabled citizens are afforded the same rights under the ADA that minorities are accorded under the Civil Rights Act, which means specifically that if a minority sues the private attorney that prevails, they get punitive damages, legal fees and they force the institution to change its ways? But under the ADA, if a disabled person prevails when they sue a private attorney, all they get are legal fees, and they force the institution to change its ways--no punitive damages.

Keyes: Well, you know, in response to the question about punitive damages, I've got to tell you that--and this is not particular to the ADA or to citizens with disabilities. It is actually a proposal that I have made in general and which I believe would be an important element of our tort reform.

I don't quite understand a concept of law which says that punitive damages are paid to harmed individuals. I don't understand that.

I believe that compensatory damages ought to be paid to harmed individuals, because that's what we do for individuals. Somebody in a careless and negligent way does things that harm you, then we ought to sit back and we ought, with diligence and care, try to determine the harm that was done you--that part of it, of course, that can be quantified and measured, we know there's part of it that can't--and then we ought to insist that that be compensated duly.

But last time I looked, punishment under our understanding of the term is not something one individual exacts from another. That is not punishment; that is revenge, that is retribution. That has no part in American law. [applause]

I believe--and I have made this proposal in the past--compensatory damages should be assessed and paid to individuals to compensate for the harm done them. Punitive damages should be assessed, be paid to the public on whose behalf that punishment is exacted.

And by the way, I realize that a proposal like this might--because it's not going to be paid to their lawyers either. [laughter] And I think that this might take some of the wind out of the sails of some of the legal community that sees this as the rough legal equivalent of a lottery game.

But I frankly don't think that people in this country benefit from that. And I have made this proposal in the past and make it again now, because I think it would be better for all of us. Let compensatory damages compensate, and let punitive damages punish, but on behalf of and to the benefit of the community, not of lawyers and individuals. [applause]

Question: Ambassador, if elected, how long would you wait to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? And would you consider moving to East Jerusalem? [laughter]

Keyes: Ah, you don't want me to avoid mine fields today, do you? [laughter]

Oh, I will preface my response to that question by saying that I might wait just long enough to assess the extent to which--on behalf, by the way, of everybody in the world, we can make a fair judgment about this question of Jerusalem. Which obviously is a question in which a lot of people take interest because Jerusalem has great meaning to many, many people in the world--Jewish people, Christian people, Muslim people. We all have a tremendous spiritual focus on Jerusalem, which in my visits there I certainly have experienced. It was for me, as it is for many people who go, a religious experience to visit.

So the question, I think, ought not to be who, in the bickering of politics and all of this and all of that, has this claim or that. You know what I think the question ought to be? Amongst those folks who take the strong and spiritual interest, to whom ought we to entrust, because it's a trusteeship, really--to whom ought we to entrust the care of this, in a sense, common possession of human kind, which is Jerusalem?

And then, I think we ought to look at the record. And I've got to tell you--based on my understanding of it, leave aside all political considerations and everything else, I would be willing to affirm, based on my firsthand view of the situation, that under the tutelage and under the administration of the Israeli government, I believe Jerusalem has been better cared for on behalf of us all than it has ever been before. [applause]

And it is after assessing that result in an unbiased way, that I would make a decision as to where we put our cabinet . . . [laughter] . . . our embassy rather, sorry.

Question: Mr. Ambassador, William Buckley has said [inaudible] the most serious problem [inaudible] . . . In light of your concern about the moral decay [inaudible], what would you, as President, do about this serious problem of illegitimacy?

Keyes: The serious problem of illegitimacy. I hate to be in a position where I might even be remotely construed as correcting someone as eminent as Bill Buckley, but I kind of wish we still were in a society where illegitimacy was the biggest problem we faced. See, because that would mean we were still able to see the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate birth.

The problem in America today is that we are fast on the road to destroying that understanding and that's the root of the problem. In order for the word "illegitimate" to have any meaning, you must have a sense of legitimate birth, and in order for a sense of a legitimate birth to exist, you have to have the sense that a heterosexual married condition is to be considered the respectable condition in which to procreate. [applause]

So, I would have to say, and I deeply believe this, that if we want to do something about the problem of illegitimacy, what we must do is we must fight to restore respect for the institution of marriage. And that means, by the way--because I know this disagrees with some. My colleague, Mr. Forbes, is finally going around talking about issues like homosexuality. He says, "equal rights for all, special rights for none." No, thank you.

We live in a civilization in which those people who are willing to respect the requirements of civilized life in which they were willing to get married, to have their children in the context of marriage, to bear before the world their open and formal responsibilities for the upbringing of their children in the context of married life, were extended and accorded the privileges that every civilized society has always given to marriage. I will defend those privileges, because without them the married condition can not exist. And that means . . . [applause] That's a hard thing to say, but I'll say it because we back away from the privileged condition of marriage, we back away from the line that is drawn between that married condition and any other condition, we accord the rights that are only to be given to married couples to those who can not be married in any true sense of the term--and I'll tell you, we will destroy the marriage institution.

And we will unleash, inevitably, upon our society a flood of tragic consequences far beyond even the scope which we already see in the destroyed and blasted lives of children whose fathers and others have turned their backs upon them.

So, you want to do something about illegitimacy? Fight with me to preserve the right concept of marriage, because it's on the line.