MP3 audio

October 22, 2004

ERICH "MANCOW" MULLER, HOST: Are they giving any reviews?

CO-HOST: They're saying there was a very spirited debate, and that also that these debates are really helping Mr. Keyes--

MANCOW: Good.

CO-HOST: --because they're giving him exposure that he wouldn't have had.

MANCOW: Let's go to Omar.

CALLER: [suggests Mancow runs for office]

MANCOW: Alan, I couldn't win anything could I?

DR. KEYES: I believe that people are sick to death of these phony, manipulative people who are basically trying to give them a line, tell them what they want to hear, pander to everything, and never speak the truth. I think people who come straight at it and are willing to look folks in the eye and tell them the truth, even though sometimes it may be something they're not all that comfortable with--I think they're coming around to the view that that's the only way that anybody can really be trusted anymore.

MANCOW: Who's going to win the presidential election?

DR. KEYES: I think Bush is going to win.

MANCOW: Yes, I do too.

DR. KEYES: I think that that is shaping up, and I think partly for that reason.

But I think in Bush's case it's the track record that's running against the rhetoric. And the track record is clear. We're sitting here--Chicago hasn't been blown up lately.

MANCOW: [laughs]

DR. KEYES: And people want to say, "Oh, Mr. President, we're not doing well in the War on Terror," and I'm thinking, well, they haven't gotten through again, and everybody was fearing that they would. And I think he has to run on the fact that he's made these decisions, and the results have been to disrupt the activities of these bad guys enough so that we haven't been struck by them again. And that's the whole point.

MANCOW: You ran against him. You ran against Bush for the presidency.

KEYES: Yes, I did.

MANCOW: And you and I agree on more things than George Bush and I agree. I think he's been a lousy president.

DR. KEYES: Well, I...

MANCOW: He was on this show, I campaigned for him, I voted for him. It's just that Kerry is so awful.

DR. KEYES: To me it comes down to an issue of survival. I can quibble with the president on this and that. People ask me about education and other things where I believe in less government, and I see his policies giving us more. I believe in fiscal discipline, and I see a lack of fiscal discipline. I can go down the list, but the fact is that if John Kerry gets elected president, these bad guys are going to think we're a bunch of chumps and they're going to be looking for our blood and thinking nobody's standing on the wall to push them back.

MANCOW: Which will be the case if we have a John Kerry presidency...

DR. KEYES: Exactly, and that's just intolerable, I just can't imagine it.

MANCOW: Alan, as a guy who's followed you and heard you speak over the years and saw you speak on the same stage with George Bush a couple of times, and I know how you feel about certain issues, I had a very strong reaction and I was furious yesterday--it was just an explosion of emotion, which I shouldn't let happen. I'm alone in my house and I said, "What!" I started yelling at the TV. Bush is saying if you get a John Kerry presidency, it's going to mean big government and Republican is going to mean smaller government. We've had more government under Bush than any president ever. Am I right? This guy campaigned and said he's an outsider as his dad, the president was sitting in the audience. An outsider? We've got more government than ever before. And now when you break down the new job numbers he's touting, you find out a lot of them are government jobs, most of them are government jobs. They're fudging the numbers, Alan.

DR. KEYES: All I can tell you is I think if voters are going in to the voting booth thinking about whether this country survived or not, G.W. Bush is going to be reelected president--because, in order to argue about all these things, we have got to be here. And we are in a situation right now where if we put the wrong person in the presidency, we will be subject I believe to a withering assault that will knock us out.

STACY: So, health care won't matter if we're not here.

DR. KEYES: A lot of things won't matter if we're not here.

STACY: Exactly.

DR. KEYES: And if you don't put somebody in, in a situation . . . You know, there are times when you get to quibble, but when the bad guys are knocking at the door, and you know good and well that when you let your defenses down they're going to get through and smack you--and I mean given that we have in the world these nasty little weapons running around in the hands of people who are either not controlling them, in the former Soviet Union, or have bad ideas about us, whether it's North Korea or others, I don't think this is a time that we can afford to send a signal, which the Spanish, by the way, did send in their election, that this blood-thirsty stuff gets you something.

MANCOW: Have you seen that footage of the explosion in the Madrid train station?

DR. KEYES: No.

STACY: It's horrible.

MANCOW: It's absolutely heartbreaking. It's horrific. I saw an interview with some of the French Muslim leaders, and they're teaching in their mosques to kill Americans and they were being interviewed, "and so you're telling your people to kill Americans when possible," and yes, absolutely, kill Americans. There are now a bunch of lawsuits against the French government because the little Muslim girls want to wear their little beekeeper costumes--where does this end?

DR. KEYES: I think this has been going on for a long time, though. I remember when I was doing my show on MSNBC going through several shows, to show that this kind of teaching was going on all over the world wherein these fundamentalist, extremist Islamic schools they're preparing the little kids to kill people, to have the heart of terrorists--with money, by the way, that even comes from people who claim they're our friends, like the Saudis. They say they're friendly with America and meanwhile they're funding schools where the little kids are being taught that they should run about killing people.

MANCOW: And they all learn these little songs--I've seen this on TV--like where we have "Jimmy Crack Corn," they have songs about killing Jews, like they're kid songs. It's just so surreal to me. So where are we headed with this, Alan?

DR. KEYES: You mean in terms of the War on Terror?

MANCOW: Ten years, twenty years, where are we going? Every country is having problems with radical Muslim ideas--where are we headed?

DR. KEYES: We are headed toward a determined effort to destroy--you've got to destroy not just the particular individuals who may come against you, you've got to destroy the whole infrastructure that supports them. And that requires a determined effort that the President is making to identify the key state sponsors, and you put them on notice, and you move them as they are vulnerable, you get their financial resources, you take countries like the Saudis who are quietly providing them with things, you also have other areas of policy, like energy independence. We have to now move forward as expeditiously as we can to cut our reliance...

MANCOW: With what?

DR. KEYES: With ethanol, with hydrogen from ethanol, with research that is needed to put these things online so that we won't be giving these people our money. It's not just a question of dependence on oil, it's a question of filling the coffers of people who are spending the dollars to kill us.

MANCOW: Where would they be without our money? Had God had not put our oil under their sand, where would they be right now?

[Comments from callers, mainly about the recent death of a young woman killed accidentally with pepper-spray by police in Boston]

MANCOW: Let's go to Lee.

CALLER: I want to talk about the Boston incident, but before that, I want to say "amen" to Alan Keyes. The comment that he made about our security, and if Kerry gets in office, the fact that we'll get attacked by these crazy types.

[skip to next caller]

CALLER: Alan Keyes, you said that you want our jobs back to America. How did we even let it get to the point where Baby Ruth is leaving America, all these big companies...

MANCOW: Tootsie Roll is leaving too, right?

KEYES: That's right. It got to that point because we bought into a bill of goods with this whole free trade myth. I'm sorry, it's a myth. People say, "Do you support free trade?" and I say, free trade doesn't exist.

MANCOW: It doesn't!

KEYES: What exists is these voluminous treaties that have been negotiated to our disadvantage, giving companies a free run of putting their companies overseas, then they send the goods back to the United States, they don't face tariff barriers--but when we send our goods overseas...

MANCOW: ... they jack up the price...

DR. KEYES: That's right, they jack up the price, so we are taking it in the neck.

STACY: Bush's answer to that was that we need to become more educated. That was his defense of why our jobs are going to India...

MANCOW: How can an American worker compete in India where there's no union, no health care, and they pay a dollar a month?

DR. KEYES: What this is all about is they talk about, y'all, it's a false thing anyway. They talk about comparative advantage. Those lower prices that these companies have, it's because the price in terms of human dignity and human freedom isn't included in the goods. In America, because we have a free system of government, we've got unions, they can negotiate better terms.

We've got representative government, you can get regulations and other things to keep the workplace safe and respect the requirements of dignified labor. That gets built into our price. In China, they don't have to do that. Those lower-priced goods are slave goods, and I often tell people I don't believe in free trade. I believe in "freedom trade": trade that respects the requirements of our freedom.

And that's not what's going on right now, and we're taking it in the neck. Our workers are losing their jobs, and meanwhile we subsidize the development of countries that are taking our money, using it to build up military machines and other things. That's going to come back to hurt us in the next decade.

MANCOW: Alan Keyes, are we going to be a third world country? Is that what our kids are going to live in?

DR. KEYES: If we go down the road of the tax-and-spend liberals like Barack Obama, if we go down the road of the people who are exporting our economy, and especially our manufacturing base, overseas, I don't see how we end up as anything else than a backwater country. We've got to stop this. They keep telling us, you're so rich and powerful. Not if we keep going down this road.

MANCOW: We're giving everything away, aren't we?

DR. KEYES: We are.

MANCOW: Will America be blessed with some of the things we're doing?

DR. KEYES: I don't believe so.

MANCOW: How can God smile on a country with a John Kerry who supports late-term abortion? How can we support that?

DR. KEYES: As somebody was telling me just this morning, because the debate on the radio when I was talking about these infants who are being put in the soiled linen closet, and Barack Obama says "it doesn't happen," apparently there's a report just this morning where a baby was found in the laundry--

STACY: Oh, yeah! A baby was found in the laundry. Yes.

DR. KEYES: --and he's telling me this doesn't happen. Yes, it does! And how can anybody's conscience not say to himself look, this is something that should not occur under any circumstances in our state! And we're violating our own principles.

I think we're in the same position as when Martin Luther King and other people stood up, looked us in the eye and said, "Look, the principle says that everybody has a right to be respected in life and dignity. We're not doing it to this group." And that group was black folk. It could be women, it could be children, it could be workers. Right now, it's our own offspring. We're treating them as if they're not entitled to be respected as human beings. What's going wrong?

MANCOW: Another thing that insults me about John Kerry [saying], "Well, it's against my religion, I'm a Catholic, and yet I voted for late-term abortion." Folks, this is a man that will say anything or do anything to get elected. When I look in those eyes I see no soul, I see a man devoid of soul, and you can look at his record and see that he'll do anything to get elected.

Alan Keyes, unfortunately, or fortunately, you won't. You won't say whatever. You've stood on morals, you've stood on principle, it gets you in trouble sometimes in these politically-correct times. Political correctness is going to be the death of us, but people always say things--and Bush didn't call them to the carpet--and I hear a lot of people say this, "Well, sometimes we have to kill a baby at 8 or 9 months to save the life of the mother," that we have to have late-term abortion. I've researched this, I've looking into it. Has there ever been a case, ever, in modern times, in the last 50 years, where a 9-month-old or the mother, which one are we going to have to kill? It's the most insane argument and nobody ever calls these people on the carpet. Am I right, Alan Keyes?

DR. KEYES: You're exactly right, and I have heard it, and I have looked into it in depth.

MANCOW: When does this happen?

DR. KEYES: This is one of those things that they talk about and talk about, but it's a situation that does not arise in the context of our modern medicine. And yet, they will cite it as if, "Well, that's decisive..."

MANCOW: Yeah.

STACY: Um-hmm.

DR. KEYES: And it is not decisive.

MANCOW: It doesn't happen! And so they make this some women's right issue: "Do you want George Bush controlling your body, ladies?" If a woman waits 8 or 9 months to decide to kill her baby, what's really going on there?

DR. KEYES: And we got the same thing last night, when we got to talking about guns. And [Obama] is all about going after guns--

MANCOW: Aw, man.

DR. KEYES: --as if people aren't doing anything and people are not involved. As if the people are not involved, and we're going to get at this problem by controlling the guns.

You're going to have a world in which the crooks are running around with every gun they want, in which the law-abiding citizens are totally disarmed, and in which you have de-emphasized education, moral decency, respect, courtesy, all the things that help people to control themselves and get off of violence. You're going to have de-emphasized what's necessary to have a decent family life, where people learn how to respect others in spite of their differences, and disagreements, and conflicts. All of those things will be by the board--and yet we're supposed to be getting less violent with less guns, with all the people out of control? It's insane!

MANCOW: We've got a million laws.

DR. KEYES: We need people who will make decisions that respect others, including the life of their own offspring, because they understand that is the right thing to do. If you are controlling yourself on the inside, you don't need a thousand million laws to control you on the outside.

MANCOW: More laws aren't going to make any difference, is that the bottom line?

DR. KEYES: Well they don't make any difference if it's a lawless heart. Lawless hearts are going to simply disregard the law, and so you've got to talk to the heart.

MANCOW: My favorite Bon Jovi song, you just named it. Lawless Heart.

CALLER: Mr. Keyes, I'm considered one of the probably 5-7% of undecided voters, and I've really been vacillating between all the candidates. But I do think that the terror situation is the most important issue--and I just don't understand why we aren't paying more attention to North Korea and Iran.

DR. KEYES: First of all I think we are paying a lot of attention to North Korea and Iran. We are paying a lot of attention to Iran in ways that I hope we don't learn about any time soon, because the proper way to deal with Iran at the moment is to be developing the intelligence assets--which our position on the ground in Iraq give us the opportunity to do--to raise up that intelligence capability we haven't been paying attention to.

A lot of people don't realize one of the biggest assets of being in Iraq is that we're on the ground in the middle of the situation, and you can be developing the kinds of intelligence assets you wouldn't otherwise have, human assets, running in and out of Iran because they are messing about with the situation in Iraq, but that gives us an opportunity to turn people. And that we're not going to hear about, and pray God we don't hear about it, because when you hear about it, it means it's messed up.

The other thing is North Korea sits on the border with China. It is not the same as Iraq. When the Soviet Union was there we couldn't deal with Iraq the way we have the freedom to deal with it right now, because there were implications that were global that could lead to a nuclear confrontation with a major power. That has to be dealt with with greater prudence and care. Not that you don't pay attention to it, but you can't just act as if you don't have one of the largest and most dangerous countries in the world sitting on the border of North Korea. We have fought them before, and that's a situation that has to be dealt with with care and prudence because of the particular situation.

MANCOW: Will the Chinese deal with them, will they take care of the situation?

DR. KEYES: I don't know. We have to deal with the Chinese as we deal with the North Koreans, in order to make sure that what we do to control the dangerous tendencies of the North Koreans don't lead to greater confrontations with the Chinese, which we don't want right now.

CALLER: [Accuses Mancow of being on the Bush payroll, says he is wearing an "I love George Bush button, and calls him insane.]

MANCOW: Alan, you're a master debater. How do I deal with someone like this? Just hang up on them, laugh at them? What do I do?

DR. KEYES: Well, you don't have any "I love George Bush" button on, and I think the first things I heard when I came in was a litany of all of the reasons why true libertarian, conservative individuals have a lot of questions about G.W. Bush.

MANCOW: Well, I'm voting Libertarian.

DR. KEYES: And I acknowledge that. I just think that the terror issue has to be given primacy. I want to see the country survive. But believe me, as I've made clear, I think that there are a whole lot of things that we're going to have to debate and discuss, but we've got to take care of business first.

I haven't tried to pretend to anybody that I'm willing to sacrifice my principles and beliefs. On education, for instance, I don't believe in federal control of education, and I believe that No Child Left Behind leads to a consolidation of control in the hands of the federal bureaucracy, which is something I've fought against in education. I think it's a parental, family, community, local responsibility, and we shouldn't be allowing federal bureaucracy to take it over. But I think the time to talk about those issues is not when somebody's at the door trying to kill you, and you've got to decide whether a guy who doesn't want to fight, but wants us to negotiate with the French while the terrorists are killing our people, is fit for office.

MANCOW: Well, they [the French] have got their own problems.

CALLER: What I don't understand is, with so many immigrants coming across the borders in the United States, why? All our jobs are going down there. They've got more jobs than us.

MANCOW: They need to stop at the border and go, hmm. Flip a coin, I guess.

STACY: [laughs] Turn back around.

DR. KEYES: [laughs]

CALLER: You know, last night, or the day before, Israel assassinated another Hamas leader. I think if John Kerry was there, he would say they have to stop doing that, and negotiating with them.

MANCOW: By the way, who are we to tell Israel what they can do, when their kids are being blown up on a daily basis?

DR. KEYES: But also, who are we to be criticizing them for doing what we have to do. I mean, and believe me, when you find these terrorists, the first thing you have to do is go after them and get them before they get you. What we've got to do now is not criticize the Israelis but follow their example every chance we get.

[various calls]

[Mancow discusses the Boston tragedy]

DR. KEYES: The idea that every time there's a bad episode we decide to give up more freedoms will leave us in a situation where we'll still have bad episodes, we'll just have no freedom. And I think it's crazy at the macro level, when you're dealing with the Patriot Act, and I think the notion that every episode that occurs requires that we take away the guns, take away the freedoms, take away the choices, take away the opportunity to start businesses, give more and more control, we're going to end up with a totalitarian police state, the very thing we say we've been fighting.

MANCOW: Aren't we already in a police state?

DR. KEYES: I hope not. I'm fighting to make sure we don't consolidate that future--and that's precisely why people like Barack Obama, who are always saying more government, more government, more government, more bureaucracy, more control...

MANCOW: Is he a communist? Is he a communist, for real? You think I'm being funny. You smiled at me.

DR. KEYES: He's a Hyde Park socialist.

MANCOW: Is he Muslim? Does he have a faith?

DR. KEYES: Things like that, I go by his own profession. He says that he is a Christian person. I take him at his word. Even though it does, though, as we saw last night--if you tell me that, that means you're holding up a standard for yourself that I get to invoke. And yesterday when the reporters asked me would Jesus vote for Barack Obama, I just went through the things....

MANCOW: What a stupid question.

DR. KEYES: But I went through the things in the scripture about where Jesus stands--and Barack Obama is taking positions diametrically opposed to all these things. Now they say that's not fair, you can't apply your religion. No, I'm applying his religion, the one he professes, the one he says shapes his conscience because he says he's a Christian. This is where he stands. I have a right to do that, I think we all do.

CALLER: Why did they wait so long to name you a candidate? I think that's going to hurt you in the long run.

MANCOW: Well, they had another candidate.

DR. KEYES: They had another candidate, and he withdrew. I don't hide from this fact: I was not living in Illinois, so of course the first thought on everybody's mind wasn't Alan Keyes. But when they went through all the alternatives, and said we need somebody who can really deal with this guy, deal with this situation, represent the Republican party and its principles, and when they turned to me and said "we need you," I responded to the need.

[break]

CALLER: [Comment about kids at school being told if Kerry doesn't win, they're going to die.]

DR. KEYES: This is why I believe in school choice. You turn your children over to liberal, left-wing, union-dominated, bureaucratic environment with people in the classroom to propagandize them in ways that have nothing to do with what you and your family are trying to accomplish in the world with your kids, and we get this kind of result. That's why I think we've got to put parents and communities back in control. Get the bureaucrats and the left-wing unions out of control of our schools.

MANCOW: Our schools need to be totally dismantled. Yes there's a few good teachers, but not enough to worry about right now. I don't understand why I can't take my tax dollars, I don't have a kid, but send my kid to a good Catholic school, if I want?

DR. KEYES: Exactly.

MANCOW: Why shouldn't I be able to choose what I want to do with my money?

DR. KEYES: Everyone forgets, this is the way American education started. It started in the home, it started with families, it started with communities, it started with churches and one-room schoolhouses. The people took the lead and the government came along afterward and said how can we help you. Not how can we control you, how can we dominate you, how can we take over everything from your influence. And that's what's happening now. It's all un-American and wrong, and we need to go to school choice to get us back in the driver's seat.

MANCOW: Boy do we need it!

Was John Kerry out of line to bring up Cheney's daughter being gay? Was that out of line?

DR. KEYES: I don't know where that came from. I think it was.

I think you get to talk about issues. But two things have happened to me in the campaign that are like this. The media brings this up. They're constantly throwing this in your face, as if it's relevant, when you're talking about traditional marriage.

And you know, I got caught in that. These reporters asked me about Cheney's daughter and then pretend I said something about her, when they had raised it in the first place. And I think that you can address these issues without going all personal because it's the issue that matters.

MANCOW: For the first time I agree with Jesse Jackson. It's never happened before. I think he's out of his mind, I think he's a race-baiter. I think if racism is solved this guy doesn't have a job and he knows it. I don't like the man, but he did say, anyone know any gay people who want to get married? Anyone? Any of your gay friends clamoring to get married? Does anyone know anything about this? No. Nobody in the audience. It's a distraction.

DR. KEYES: One of the things I've never understood is people have their private friendships and private relationships. Why would you want to invite the government to regulate your private friendships and private relationships? The only reason that the male/female relationship has the marriage institution is because children were a consequence that society had to react to. Other than that, why would you want the government saying, "This is my friend, but we're going to institutionalize it, and we're going to have all these obligations"? Most of us want our relationships to come from the heart, not from the government.

[Discussion about Nascar and movies]

MANCOW: Alan--they asked him how he was preparing for his debate with Obama. He said, "I'm going to go see Sky Captian."

DR. KEYES: I did. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's a good film. That's how I prepared for the radio debate. Yes, I went to see it.

I have found--people laugh at this, but it's not funny. The most important thing for me to do before these debates is relax. You've got to clear your head. You've got to get away from the stuff that will get you all tensed up--and I like going to movies, so I go see a movie.

[small talk]

MANCOW: It was pathetic. Obama wasn't ready for that fight. Come on, that was a gun battle, and he brought nothing. I mean, you destroyed him.

KEYES: You know, when the reporters asked me how I prepare for the debate, I just look at them and say, look, I've been preparing for this all my life. Everything I have done leads up to these moments, and all I do is draw on the results of that. It's no different than any other time I'm asked a question. I just try to give the answer that has resulted from the work, learning, and experience that I've developed--and I've put it to the best interests of the people I'm trying to serve.

MANCOW: You did a nice job. Al, go ahead.

AL (IN STUDIO): One of the things that I enjoy about the debates that you and Mr. Obama are having is that they're actual debates. Unlike the presidential debates, you're able to ask each other questions. What is one question that you did not get a chance to ask Barack Obama that you'd like to ask now?

DR. KEYES: [laughs] I'll have to think about that one.

[More bantering about the debate]

MANCOW: Alan Keyes, thank you. We appreciate you coming in. Vote for Keyes. And, Obama, again, you're welcome to come on this show.

DR. KEYES: By the way, Keyes2004.com, Keyes2004.com if you want more information, following the campaign, looking at videos...Keyes2004.com