Alan Keyes
October 4, 1996

Alan Keyes: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening!

[Response from audience: GOOD EVENING!]

Keyes [laughing]: I guess it is!

You know, I am always of two minds when I come to pro-life engagements. Because it's always wonderful to be with people committed to this cause, who I think, obviously, represent the better heart and the better will of America.

I do look forward to the day, though, when we'll all find some other cause to get together in, because we will be able to celebrate our ultimate victory in this one. And what I would like to do this evening is two-fold--because I think that we are actually standing at a moment when, on the one hand, it seems to me we could be coming out of the darkness and into the light, and on the other we could very well be plunging into a double-darkness from which we should not emerge. I don't know which it shall be. We are betwixt and between.

On the one hand, we live in a time when pretty much universally now it is acknowledged, even by those people who claim to be, quote, "pro-choice"--[those who] tolerate this whole abortion business--but even they have to acknowledge that abortion is wrong. Have you noticed that? They do.

I remember, quite some time back, reading an article in Newsweek or U.S. News, and Hillary Clinton, of all people, had these three words come out of her mouth in an interview: "Abortion is wrong." And you might think, "Oh, that doesn't matter because she doesn't act like it, doesn't do this, doesn't do that." But it does matter, you see.

Look back at the history of this country and tell me: On which subject is it that the conscience of America concluded "this is wrong" and we continued indefinitely to persist in it? Hasn't happened! No, by the time that we concluded that slavery was wrong, it took us a little while, but we got up the will to fight a bloody civil war to get rid of it. By the time we concluded that racism and discrimination were wrong, it took a lot of work, but we finally turned ourselves around.

And you can look at every front. The American conscience doesn't long continue in a course of action which it believes to be wrong. And in the last twenty, twenty-five years, my friends, it has seemed long and it has seemed arduous, it has seemed difficult, but I believe we can say unequivocally that on the moral front we have won this battle! They cannot declare that [abortion] is a positive good.

I believe that the partial-birth abortion debate was also a good sign of this. Because--and some people wondered why are we having a big fight over this, you know? Because, after all, "What they're doing to the child there, at that moment just before complete separation from the womb, is no worse, indeed is somewhat better, than what they do to the child in the womb when they tear apart its limbs." And this is absolutely true.

But it was a good thing that we drew the line. Because it was a debate that, for the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided, finally focused the discussion and the consciousness and the conscience of America on the life of the child. Finally getting folks to look at it and admit that what abortion involves is the taking of a life--and in this particular case, of course, the taking of a life in a heinous and brutal fashion. What it focused people on was the fact that, how can they say that this is not infanticide, when we are three seconds and three inches from complete birth?

But do you know what it's also getting a lot of people to realize? What you can say of that life three seconds and three inches from birth, you can say of it two weeks, and fully enclosed in the womb. I think the pro-abortion forces in this country recognize the danger of the partial-birth abortion debate, because it's finally getting a lot of Americans to think through this reality.

And Americans--even those who are pro-abortion convicted, like a lady I saw an article by in the New York Times, I think it was, recently. Her name was Anne Roiphe. [Editor's note: see New York Times article, Moment of Perception, Anne Roiphe, September 19, 1996]

I don't know if any of you saw this piece. But it was an interesting piece. Because she began by suggesting that the "pro-choice," as she called it, has gone wrong by not taking the moral concerns of the pro-life movement more seriously--particularly where this question of life was concerned.

And then she concluded that, "But you know, we may or may not be able to decide when life begins, and all of this, but we know that, at that moment of conception, something mysterious, and something sacred and important is happening, and we (she meant the pro-abortion movement) should acknowledge this." And then something happened in that article that I'm talking about, I'm drawing folks' attention to, because I think it was the sound, finally, of the other shoe dropping in the pro-abortion argument. She wrote the following sentence, and it was the first time I think I had seen boldly stated, clearly and unequivocally stated, the true consequence, the true premise, the true and clear logic of the pro-abortion movement.

She said the following: "Human life is sacred," she said. "But, there are times when one life is more sacred than another." And there in front of me, finally--because I've been talking about this for the longest time, trying to get folks to understand that at the heart of the pro-abortion movement is not only the assault on innocent life, but the assault on the fundamental principle of moral equality on which this nation was founded. The pro-abortion logic is that we must take the Declaration principle that we are all created equal and endowed by God with unalienable rights and throw it away, "Because there are times in human life when one human life is more sacred than another; when one human being is more equal than another; when one person is to be preferred to another."

And I looked at that, and I said, "Thank you, Lord." Because, you know, I do not believe the people of this country are ready to reject the basic principle on which our whole way of life rests. I don't think that they are ready to throw out that moral understanding which allows every single one of us--rich, poor, educated, uneducated, whether we are wealthy and strong, whether we are weak and beset--allows us to stand before every government, and every person in the world, to claim our equal and unassailable dignity and moral worth. The Declaration principle is the ground for that moral equality which gives us the right to vote, the right to speak, the right to due process; it is the principle that makes us free.

And if we follow the pro-abortion road, then we shall go down Anne Roiphe's road of logic, which is the logic that prevailed in every tyranny, in every despotism, in every heavy-handed oligarchy, aristocracy, monarchy, in the history of the world. Some human beings are more equal than others, and entitled to the privilege of deciding whether they shall live or die.

This is what's at stake in our struggle with the pro-abortion cause. Yes, indeed. And it's now out, to be placed before the American people, even as the question of slavery was ultimately placed, in stark terms that confront us at last with the true implications. This isn't a question of a woman's right to choose. It is a question of whether we as Americans shall respect that principle and that logic whereby any of us can claim any rights whatsoever. And the moment of truth is at hand.

This is a good thing. So, this gives me hope. It gives me hope as well when I see the great success that is being enjoyed, in fact, by the pro-life movement all over this country. And by people standing up, finally, and with courage unequivocally standing for pro-life principles. We've been delivering people some real political surprises lately, as you are well aware. And we are being told that this pro-life movement is a political liability, and we've got a big majority for the pro-abortion cause, and so forth. And yet, in 1994, not a single pro-life incumbent was defeated, and more than two-thirds of the entering freshman Republican class were strongly pro-life moral conservatives.

In this year we look around, and what do we find in Kansas, and what do we find in Louisiana, and what do we find elsewhere? We find that within the Republican ranks pro-life candidates standing unequivocally, unabashedly, unashamedly, for the cause of life have, against the odds and the expectations of the media, won their elections, moved to nomination, and are standing now boldly before the people of this state and others to declare their allegiance to the cause of life.

Now, and I know . . . I read an article in the Washington Post the other day--they are hoping, they go to bed praying at night, "God, defeat them all." But I don't think God shall hear them. The Lord hears the cries of the poor. And who are poorer in this life than those who have been deprived of it by the unjust principle that a woman, or any other human being, has the right on her whim and convenience to take the life of her offspring? See, I don't think the Lord will hear those cries.

I pray that at least a couple of them will win. We don't have to win all of those races, you know; just a couple of them. That'll be enough. And we ought to get out and work for it, too. Because every time a pro-life candidate wins in spite of all of their lies and misrepresentations, the true nature of the American conscience becomes that much clearer to an American people being misled on every front today by a media that is lying especially--especially and particularly--about this cause. They want us to believe, you know, that we can't get anywhere; that we are losing; that we must back off.

And I watched in the last two and a half years--I don't know if any of you did watch this whole election thing on the Republican side. Those who know me marveled at my entry into the presidential race. I marveled at it a little bit, myself. Most of them did forbear to send me the name of any good psychiatrists they knew of. But I'm sure that they thought about it.

But what got me involved in that whole business was that people I sort of had some respect for, and whom I had thought were the national leaders who would surely stand unequivocally for the pro-life cause started going before the American people and saying things like, "Well, you know, we haven't done our job of convincing everybody. The constitutional issues are settled for the time being. Let's concentrate on reducing the numbers of abortions, and forget this whole human life amendment and forget the issue of principle. We can't win on that one."

And I heard people, whose initials I should give you. Shall I give you their initials? I heard people whose initials are Bill Bennett, and Dan Quayle and others saying things like this. It shocked me, I've gotta tell you. It did shock me. It shocked me.

It's like the Republican Convention, recently held, shocked me. Was anybody here shocked by that convention? I was shocked by it. Do you know what I was shocked by? I was shocked by being in a convention where the overwhelming majority, solid, from every part of the country, a majority, even in some of these states where you had pro-abortion governors doing their best to stack the deck against pro-life people--we still managed to pull out strong pro-life representation. So that this was a convention that was more strongly pro-life than the convention that met to nominate George Bush in 1992. Did you realize that? More strongly committed to the moral conservative cause. More strongly committed to the pro-life, moral conservative cause. Proving, of course, what we all know: that this is a cause that has strong roots in the Republican Party, and, as we saw at the Democrat Convention, spreads its life in the Democratic Party, because it is the cause of truth.

But what appeared on the podium at the Republican Convention? The one thing I will say about the Democrats: at least they were honest about it. They kept Bob Casey off that podium at that convention because he disagreed with their platform. They kept Alan Keyes off the podium at the Republican Convention because I agree with the platform. This is strange logic.

The platform was written as a strongly, unequivocally, pro-life platform, committed to the battle in principle. Because the delegates there, at least, realized, "We're not going to convince people to reduce the numbers of abortion if we give up the battle to establish once and for all that abortion is wrong and violates the principles of justice on which this nation rests."

And so we must stand in that battle. And to take any other course, ANY course, which turns from the issue of principle, simply means that at this, the very moment of our victory, we shall lose because we back away. Do not let this happen.

I believe that if one has any sense at all for the situation of America today you have got to be able to feel how close we are to turning the conscience of this country completely around on this issue.

And I think the only hope that our opponents have now is that we shall talk ourselves out of it. To avoid that, I think that we can take a very simple step--a very simple step. Let us not take our counsel from polls, or from editorials in the newspapers, or from pundits, or from slick political consultants. I would say, very simply, let us take our bearings from the one place that is permanent and sure. Let us be certain that whatever the polls may say, and whatever the prospects may look like according to the nightly news, we do what God wants us to do.

And remember, even if it should seem to be the case that at this moment numbers dwindle a little bit, and so forth--I can't help but remember that famous story in the Bible. The Israelites were going against . . . it was Philistines, I believe, wasn't it? They had the thirty thousand, and God said, "Nah, send them away." Down to three thousand, He said, "Go make 'em drink water, and the ones that drink looking at the enemy like they know what they're doing, you let them fight." Three hundred. So as God dwindles the numbers, you know what He's doing, don't you? He's just preparing the day of victory. As He dwindles the numbers in the eyes of human beings, He increases the strength of His own arms. And this is the truth of our cause, today. We gain strength in the spirit of America, even as we lose strength in the blind eyes of the so-called world.

This is the good news. But there is bad news.

And actually I think it's very bad. It's possibly the worst prospect I have seen on the horizon in America in a long time. You have read, I am sure, that the Supreme Court has now decided to take up the question of whether this business of assisted suicide must be tolerated.

I hope that we realize that, should the Supreme Court decide this issue wrongly, then just at the moment when we might have freed America from the night of Roe vs. Wade, we shall plunge ourselves into an even deeper night. For, if the whole idea of assisted suicide, of a "right" to suicide, is accepted, then we shall as a people have done explicitly what Roe vs. Wade only does by implication.

It's an implication I always bring out for people. It's very important to bring it out. The implication of Roe vs. Wade is that we human beings decide not only on the value, but even on the humanity of that life in the womb--of human life. In doing so, what is it that we do, according to our own American creed? It's clear; in that creed it is clearly stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed--" not by mother's decision, father's decision, Congress's decision, court's decision, or any human decision, but by God, with their "unalienable rights." The bedrock premise of American life.

Which makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And when I say what I'm about to say, they all try to come up in arms against me, and accuse me of imposing religion or something on American life. No I don't. I'm just looking at the principle, right there in front of us. That principle on which everything rests, for which there has been and is no substitute as the foundation of our free way of life. And that principle clearly respects, clearly relies upon, the sovereignty of God.

What will happen to us if, at whim, in a Supreme Court decision, with respect to this whole issue of suicide and so forth, we explicitly reclaim God's authority and pretend it is our own?

And this is very true. And I'm actually preparing to write something, because, you know, I do have the advantage--I guess it's a little bit of an advantage--of knowing somebody on the Supreme Court now. He's a good buddy of mine, in fact. And this gives me the privilege of talking to him, and I will share some thoughts with him on this subject, hopefully help him out a little.

Though I have to tell you, he is the one guy, Clarence Thomas, who doesn't need much help on the Court, I don't find, not in these issues.

But anyway . . . but the help I would give is simply to point out that when the great arguments were made that led to the insights on which this nation was founded, the kind of "human" insights, one of the great philosophers that our Founders relied on, John Locke, has an explicit discussion of this whole question of suicide. And he makes it very clear, that if you wish to sustain the notion that you cannot base legitimate government on a right of conquest or tyranny, then you have to respect the fact that as human beings we do not have the ultimate power over our own lives.

See, this is a very important point, which we have forgotten. The reason you can't claim the ultimate power over your own life is because if you could claim it, you could give it up. And you can't give it up. A lot of people don't see this, but those famous words, " . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"--what does that word "unalienable" mean? It means that you cannot give them up, that you are not the ultimate authority in determining whether they are yours or not.

And that makes perfect sense, because the rights are not the result of human decision or artifice. They are inherent in your nature as it comes from the hand of God: a determination of His will, not your will. And therefore, in order to keep that claim, and to stand upon it, even in the fact of superior force, superior claims of authority in worldly terms, you must rely on the authority of God.

But that reliance requires that you respect God's authority in those key areas on which your rights depend, and the first one is what? Life itself. Your life, in that fundamental sense, is not your own.

And Locke himself makes the argument that life is a trust from God. We are only the trustees. And our right in this respect does not extend to the taking of our own life, and therefore it could not extend to giving power, absolute power, over our life to any king or conqueror whatsoever.

It's a beautiful argument. It's also one that may seem totally irrelevant. People think that arguments are irrelevant, you know? I stand here and say, "Let's do that." "It's not very practical," and so forth?

Don't you . . . that's why we're free, these arguments, you know. What enslaved people down through the centuries was not the weapons. It was not the armies. What enslaved the great mass of people down through the centuries were the opinions that kept them from seeing the truth of their own worth and dignity.

That is why Thomas Jefferson, in the famous words that are inscribed on his monument in Washington . . . what does he say? He doesn't say "I swear eternal enmity against every form of tyranny." No. He says "I swear eternal enmity against every form of tyranny over the MIND of man." Our freedom is born in these insights of the mind, where we see clearly the truth, the reality, of that indefeasible worth which God has extended as a free gift to every human being.

We have built a great nation upon this principle of justice. But if we give in to the temptation now, based on specious arguments presented by even more specious individuals, we will find ourselves handing away the dearest thing we own.

It really appalls me. You know, I'm probably talking out of school, though, so I won't mention what show or anything, but I'm going to appear on a television show on Sunday. I was just told that one of the topics was going to be the "spitting episode" at the baseball game, and that a prominent guest was coming on who wanted to talk about this as a significant sign of America's moral and cultural decline. (laughter)

Now, when they told me this, I had to allow as how I thought that in a country which is at present represented in the White House by a man widely understood to be an adulterer, a womanizer, a liar--by someone who has in various ways represented and misrepresented the truth, been involved in all kind of shady this'es and thats, abused executive authority of various kinds--when we live in a nation where the supreme court sanctions the taking of innocent, fragile life in the womb, and when we are a people watching Jack Kevorkian, whom I believe myself to be a serial killer who has found a way to do it right out in front of all of us; when we are living in a nation with that kind of problem, it seems to me a bit strange that we should wax eloquent over the "spitting episode" as a sign of our national decline.

So we stand betwixt and between, here. As it were, on the one hand, a great hope, a light breaking in a darkness that has been gloomy for lo these twenty and twenty-five years, since Roe v. Wade was decided; and on the other, those forces of wickedness throw up another one, to see whether the Supreme Court, knowing that we are close to victory on this version of the lie, "maybe we can get it past them over here."

And what is going to make the difference? Well, I don't think it will surprise you too much, what I am going to say now. What is going to make the difference, between that possible sunrise and that possible night? I think it's you. Because Lincoln was right. This is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. At least for the time being, it still is.

But that emphasis which . . . you hear that phrase, and it sounds sort of like it's all about privileges and benefits and rights and things that we're supposed to have, and it sounds like somebody's giving us something. But no. That phrase, "government of the people, by the people, for the people," isn't about somebody giving anybody anything. It's about what we as a people are willing and capable of doing on our own behalf, and on behalf of justice.

It is not our leaders who, in the end, will determine the fate of this nation. On Sunday, two of them will get up there and they'll battle it out for the presidency, and we'll all pretend that issues of great moment and significance are going to be decided in the outcome of the presidential race. And to a degree we are right.

But issues of greater moment are decided in the debates that each of us have within our own hearts, within our own families, within our own communities, within our own schools. Do we have the courage to stand up for those things we know to be right, even if it means risking a moment of friendship with our children? Do we have the courage to stand up for those things we know to be right, even if it means stirring up controversy in our own communities over how the schools shall be run, and what shall be taught, and what shall be allowed?

If we don't have the courage, as individuals, to understand that the leaders for America are not made on high, they are made right here--that the people who are going to save this Republic are people sitting around these tables in every city, in every town, in every county in America . . .

This is a nation that was built, from the bottom up, by people whom no one had ever heard of at the time. And we have become a nation that no one shall ever forget. But I'll tell you something: we shall not be worthy of that heritage, we shall not fulfill that destiny, if as a people we are no longer capable of rising in our ordinary way to the extraordinary requirements of our freedom.

And the cause that brings us together tonight is, I believe, in our time the greatest challenge that we face. I think it's becoming increasingly clear, that line from the old poem: "This is the way the world ends; this is the way the world ends; this is the way the world ends--not with a bang, but a whimper." So true, now. How many whimpers? A million? A million, seven hundred thousand a year? And our world does end. Our world of principle, our world of justice, our world of righteousness, our world of truth, ends each and every time one of those small voices is stilled.

And who shall, if not we, help to bring that holocaust to an end? Who shall, if not we, fight to re-establish at every level in American life, beginning in our very hearts, those truths without which our hearts will turn to stone--mothers against children; fathers against children; children against children--until our streets are so filled with violence, and our homes and hearths and schools so filled with fear, that we will surrender to tyranny and see it as relief?

We are what stands between that fate and this nation that we love. We must do our part now.

And I think that in some ways our disappointment in leadership--it's a good thing. It's time that we stood completely disappointed in "our leaders," in order that we shall rediscover the real truth of American life, which is that everywhere and always, if this freedom is to survive, WE must be the leaders who show to our so-called "leaders" the truths, the values, the faith, that they are supposed to represent.

That is, I believe, what lies before the pro-life movement as a great challenge. For, yes, we fight for the life of each and every child nascent in the womb: we fight so that the poets, and the writers, and the authors, and the scientists, and the researchers, who could very well thrill the heart and raise the spirit and solve the problems of this world of ours, will see the light. But we fight also in a pro-life movement that is for the life of this nation, and indeed, for what it represents to the spirit, the decent spirit, of the world.

So we can't afford to lose courage. And of course we won't. I don't believe we shall. Everywhere I go. I feel it. I am greatly privileged, you know. Not many people are as lucky as I have been in recent times, because I get to go to a lot of pro-life dinners and be fed (laughter) . . . by the warmth and the health, and the decency, and the faith, and the strong belief in God Almighty that informs this movement.

It is part of the struggle to save America's life, but it is, itself, renewing that life as we move from battle to battle, from day to day, learning the truth that liberty is formed by our efforts in faith, and guaranteed in the end, now as it was in the beginning, by our firm reliance upon the Providence of God.

Put your hand in His Hand, and your faith in His Will, and that is all we will need. For, whether we stand defeated or whether we stand victorious today: if we stand in that faith, we have won the greatest victory of all.