Alan Keyes
February 29, 1996

Thank you!

God bless you! Praise God indeed.

Thank you very much!

Well, I've got to tell you, it's good to be here. And I appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts with all of you this evening about the challenge that this country faces.

Now, I know I'm supposed to stand up here and talk to you about who you support for the President and all that. And I guess the way it is often spoken about, it's supposed to be some kind of personal appeal. But you know, it's not.

As citizens, we are faced with a choice in this election year about what we consider to be the most important priority of this nation's life. And it is only after we make that decision that we can, in fact, make an informed decision about who ought to be our choice for President of the United States. Now I believe that, looking at the Clinton Administration, there can be no real doubt anymore as to what the major challenge is that faces the United States.

But I'm afraid that Republicans are going to make a tremendous error this year, if we are not very careful. The American people are going to have to understand what's wrong with Bill Clinton's America. Give them the right answer to that question, on what is, in fact, based on the real challenge that this administration represents, and we will win the election in 1996. Give them a false answer to that question, one that does not reflect reality and that runs from the real issues of the day, and don't fool yourselves. We can lose, because we are in fact, right this minute, losing.

And you should be asking yourselves, "Why?" How on earth have we come from a situation, in 1994, when the Republicans captured the Congress and Bill Clinton was just about as politically dead as anybody I've ever seen in American politics? And yet, I stand here today, and you can read the papers, and you can look at the polls, and you can see what all the pundits are saying, and the Clinton Administration seems at the moment to be somebody's version of that horror cult film "The Night of the Living Dead." He's walking around, breathing, talking just like he was a living real political figure with a chance of re-election--and how did we get here?

Well, I'll tell you how I think we got here. We got here on account of a leadership that has presented the issues to the American people in the wrong way--in a way that actually has Bill Clinton fighting on the strong ground of class resentment that the Democrats have always used to put their coalition back together. You fight Bill Clinton on the grounds of more money, less money; more government, less government; budgets and fiscal policy; and you will get the defeat that you deserve. Because when you ask the question, "What's wrong with Bill Clinton's America?" that kind of an answer misses the point entirely.

Bill Clinton's America isn't just about what's going wrong with the economy, because I'll tell you--you can pray for it if you like, I never pray for this country's ill. So I pray every day that we will remain strong and prosperous, that the economy will do well, that the people will have jobs. The mere fact that that might redound to Bill Clinton's credit doesn't bother me in the least. Because I know it's not to his credit.

If we do well in spite of the over-taxation, over-regulation, government interference and government domination of this economy, it's not a tribute to Bill Clinton. It's a tribute to the intelligence and the creativity of the American people. They're the ones who make this economy work!

But it could be, it could be though, that if we go out and try to fight the November election on those economic grounds, some politicians are going to have to pray for rain. They're gonna have to hope that things look pretty bleak. And I will never want to hope that for the people of this country.

I never want to stake my claim to any office, or any ambition, on the failure and suffering of the American people. And we don't have to! Because what's wrong with Bill Clinton's America goes way beyond anything you can talk about with dollars and cents. What's wrong with Bill Clinton's America is that he represents the most anti-moral, anti-family administration in the history of this country!

From the moment he came into office he could not wait, didn't even wait till he was inaugurated before his pen moved to claim the lives of innocent unborn children. Could not act fast enough to implement the agenda of imposing--IMPOSING!--the ideology of gay-rights activists on the military people of this country, at the expense of our security. And even later than that: this is a man who, even in the face of the shocked conscience and revulsion of pro-abortionists in his own party, still dares to stand up and defend partial-birth torture murders of the unborn.

If you want to defeat Bill Clinton, then you better remind America of exactly what he is and what he stands for--an America with families weakened by government expansion, an America where the promotion of a licentious and corrupt concept of freedom breaks down the moral discipline that our children need in order to succeed. An America where Jocylen Elders was appointed to tell our kids to do in the back seat what they shouldn't do in the front seat, the bedroom, the living room, or ANY room at their age!

You see, I think it's gonna be very easy to defeat Bill Clinton, if we take the issues to the American people in the right way, if we base them on what is objectively the truth about this country's circumstances. And no matter how much we try to make it up right now--there's anxiety out there about the economy, people worried about whether they'll have jobs and so forth. But you know, we really have to worry about our obsession with material things.

We are trying right now to fill up, with all these materialistic preoccupations, a moral and spiritual void that cannot be filled by them. And as we encounter more and more--it doesn't matter how much success we have as a people, we'll never be satisfied if we don't rediscover the moral foundations and moral anchors that are in fact the real foundation of our liberty.

And that is the real crisis that we're facing in America--the crisis of younger generations out on the streets murdering, and raping, and prostituting, and taking drugs with an intensity and at a rate unprecedented in the history of the country. If we look at what is going on with new generations of Americans, we can see a mirror held up to us in which we can read the face of our future. And I'll tell you that the future looks pretty grim, as the intensified crime and violence and lack of discipline and guidance and sense of moral priorities that is now reflected in this society continues.

When are we gonna face the truth? I said it at the beginning of this campaign, I say it now, I will say it throughout the campaign, and I will bring it to every platform, no matter what effort it takes: we don't just have money problems, we have moral problems! And we had better address those problems NOW! As our top priority! Or we will not recover!

You know, there are some platforms on which they'd rather I didn't say it, because you start talking that way, and people might think that it's important to make it our top priority to restore the moral and material foundations of decent family life. They might think that it was a real crisis that the illegitimacy rate in this country is now over 30%; they might think it was a desperate and disastrous crisis that, in certain communities, there are 65% and 67% of the children growing up in single-parent households without the stability of a marriage-based, two-parent family; they might look at the statistics that tell us that every major problem we have--the crime, the mis-education, the poverty--the major contributing factor in ALL of these things it the breakdown of family life, and they might have to admit that the breakdown of our family system is NOT due to economic causes. The Great Depression did not cause the breakdown of our family system, no economic downturn ever caused the breakdown of our family system, no loss of jobs, no degree of poverty has ever caused the breakdown of our family system!

It is the loss of the heart, the discipline, the right understanding of love and commitment and obligation that is destroying our family life!

And I know it's real popular for folks to tell me, "Well that's all well and good, but what does it have to do with running for President?" What are they talking about?

I have lived in this country--I think y'all have too--for a while now. You look at the years since 1960 and you tell me that the family-destroying welfare system isn't what accounts for the breakdown of the family among the poor. You tell me that a burdensome income tax system that more and more robs the surplus of working and middle-class families in this country isn't contributing to the breakdown of the family system. You tell me that an NEA-dominated, Planned Parenthood-dominated approach to education in our schools isn't a direct assault on the moral character that our young people need to sustain family life.

I think, unfortunately, it's becoming altogether too popular in the Republican Party and in conservative circles for people to start practicing covert socialism. By that, I mean these arguments that imply that we are the victims, and the government is the answer. And people have their ways around it, and so forth and so on. You know, you range all the way from the Bill Clinton-style socialists all the way over to the Pat Buchanan-style socialists.

I know, upset everybody. But don't tell me that you present an argument that says we've all been victimized by foreign bogeymen, and government protectionism will solve the problem. Anytime you tell me that the government is the answer, you've told me a socialist lie! The government is not the answer! Not protectionist socialism, and not Bill Clinton socialism!

I'm gonna stick with the true conservative agenda that sees the destruction that government has wrought, and that knows that our priority in politics is to stop the damage that government is doing--break up the power concentrated in the government's hands, and return it to the people of this country, return the welfare system to the control and administration of churches and grassroots-based institutions that can address the moral dimension of helping people restore their lives, return the schools to the control of parents, who can in fact restore the tie between home and school, between education and character formation, and take their children back from those who are distorting their values and destroying their moral judgment.

And finally, I'll tell ya: for all you folks out their wearing Forbes buttons, don't fool yourselves. Kids are not joining gangs these days because they have to pay a progressive income tax. And we are not going to solve the problem by following a flat tax approach that just lets the government have a certain percentage--because that preemptive claim to a percentage of our income is what has all these people talking like it's their money. Because after all, if you have an income tax that gives the government a preemptive claim to a certain percentage of your paycheck, who decides the percentage? They do! Have you noticed that? What stops them from setting it at a hundred percent? Theoretically, nothing at all. That means that every cent that you take home is an allowance from the government.

That's probably why the other day on stage Steve Forbes slipped into the parlance of talking just like 'em. You know: "Well, the flat tax is great because it will ALLOW people to keep more of their money." What is this? This language doesn't bother you? When people start talking about "allowing" you to keep what is your own? That ought to tell you that we are living under a system that treats us not as a free people, but as tax slaves and tax serfs--the wage slaves of the government.

And I think the only way, the only way that we can end that serfdom is to follow Bill Archer and others in the Congress and leadership of the United States who have the courage to stand up and admit: the rate is not the problem. The structure is not the problem. The tax itself is the problem! Abolish the income tax, and restore the constitution of freedom under which this country was founded!

If we return to the original principles this nation was based on, we will understand that this was not a country that was supposed to be about government--not about good government, not about big government, not about expanding government. This is a country that's supposed to be about self-government--government of the people, by the people, for the people--founded in that great principle the Founders set forth in the beginning: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

But if you take those principles seriously, they not only talk about your rights--they talk about the source of those rights in the will, power and authority of God. And if we acknowledge that will, power and authority, then we must acknowledge that our freedom is limited and constrained by our responsibility before God. There is no licentious right to do as we please. There is only a right to respect His will and the choice He has made to grant us human life, and human dignity, and a country that can be free and prosperous and great if we respect that grant from God in one another, in all of us--whether in the womb or in the world, whatever our background, color or creed.

That, I believe, is the great unifying principle of this great American people. And if we speak from the heart of that principle to the heart of the American people, we will carry forward the cause of conservatism--not with the voice of culture war, but with the voice of moral healing that will unite all Americans again behind the conservative leadership that will lay the solid foundation for America's hope and liberty and prosperity in the millennium to come.

Thank you very much.