Alan Keyes
October 12, 1996

"What Kind of People Have We Become?"

John Blewett: And now it is my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker. I have known this man for a little over a year. I never knew him before, but I'll tell you, the first time I heard him speak I said, "I want to know him and I want to know him well, because he has a lot to say." And it has been a privilege to introduce him a few times in different places around the country and I am very grateful that he is here today.

By the way, we think of this hostile culture out there as buffeting us around and knocking us around in every way possible, and we usually think of that in the spiritual sense or the mental sense or in terms of our passions, whatever might be getting hit at a given time. Now, our speaker had a direct collision with our culture today, in that on his way down here, his car was rear-ended. So that's a different kind of collision with our culture--but a collision, nevertheless. But he's here, thank Heavens. Thank God he's here safely, and all with him.

He had a close call a few of weeks ago, when his car . . . actually, the driver had a spasm and passed out, and it was a very harrowing situation. So, he's leading what could be called a dangerous life--but not any more, not any more because he's with us and we'll protect him.

I followed with great interest myself, and I'm sure many of you did, his recent presidential campaign for the Republican nomination. It was a fascinating process, and I think that this country learned a lot of things that would not have been known otherwise, had he not been speaking. And I pray that he never stops. [applause]

I must give you some of his background just for those of you who might not know it. He has twice been nominated for the US Senate in neighboring Maryland. He was president of Citizens Against Government Waste. He has been Deputy Ambassador to the UN. He has been an Assistant Secretary of State. He has hosted a radio talk show. He has been president of a private college. The question would be: what hasn't he done?--really, all in a comparatively short lifetime!

To me, he is as inspirational and compelling a speaker as I have ever heard. And I would like to introduce to you, Ambassador Alan Keyes.

Alan Keyes: God Bless you. Praise God! Thank you. Praise God. Thank you. Thank you. Praise God. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Well, I understand--now, I may be wrong about this, but God is ubiquitous. The devil, however, can only be in one place at a time. He has his minions at work. So I guess I've got to feel pretty good, because sometime in the last couple of weeks I think he was fairly busy on my track--so he was probably not bothering anybody else for that time.

And we were actually in Illinois, when this very strange episode--strangest thing that's ever happened to me I think--though Jim Phillips, Jim are you here, Jim? Did Jim go out or come in? Jim's not here. He's my aid. And I don't know if you've ever in your life had to credit somebody with the literal saving of it, in a physical sense. But, but in that episode Jim actually saved my life. He sort of jumped up to the front and reached through the partition, with this car barreling along at 70 miles an hour, barely able to do anything he wrestled with it until it came to a halt after crossing several lanes of traffic, going onto the median. We almost entered the other lane. And how we managed to get through all of this without one of the big trucks cruising up and down that road smacking into us, is known but to God. But He knew it. He was on, He was on watch, too, that day. This is good.

Ah, but it was quite an episode, literally, because the driver fell asleep at the wheel. He had some kind of an episode and he just passed out! And we kind of noticed it. [laughter] It took a minute or two. I have lived with this, and I recount it not just because it's an interesting story that I was involved with, but also because I have been, since that time, kind of wrestling with the symbolism of it.

You know, I still live in the belief that you have to think through what happens to you in life, because the Lord does work and He speaks in many ways. And His words are deeds, and His deeds are words--and the deeds of your life can often be words too, meant to convey something. And when he plucks you out of harm's way, I always assume that there's got to be something in it that you ought to be trying to understand.

And here I was living with this image. I am host of a radio program, now, called America's Wake Up Call. And I thought it particularly interesting that, hosting a show called America's Wake Up Call, I should nearly be killed in an accident because my driver falls asleep at the wheel! [laughter]

You know, is someone trying to tell me something? I don't know. But, I don't know if I've gotten this right or not, but I believe that there is a serious point in that metaphor. And it may not be, because we could certainly say if we wanted to in this country today, that our drivers--we call them our leaders--have fallen asleep at the wheel. And that as a result, that vehicle which is the vehicle of our moral sense, and of our moral culture, and of our moral conscience is careening out of control along the great highway of our existence, threatening all and sundry with deep physical mayhem, and at the same time, of course, risking the life of this Republic.

And at first I thought, that seems like it might be an apt metaphor, you know, drivers falling asleep at the wheel. But then it occurred to me to wonder that I was assuming something about that situation, because I was maybe assuming an answer about the question of who's driving! Who is driving? See? Because in that particular situation for me--I mean, at the moment I'm supposed to be one of those leaders--I was sitting in the back of the car, you know, and somebody ELSE was driving.

Maybe that's literally the case in America today. These people we call leaders aren't driving at all. Somebody else is driving. Somebody else is supposed to be driving. Only the driver has fallen asleep at the wheel, has even forgotten him or herself to such an extent that I'm not sure that we realize any more who the driver is. And the question came to me, put itself to me, this way: in the United States of America, who is the sovereign?

Someone called me up on the radio show not long ago and was talking to me about Biblical ideas of government--how you submit yourself to government, and to kings and so forth and so on--and he alluded to our present occupant of the White House, as if this individual was, sort of, you know, the ruler that we have at the moment. And it occurred to me that many people might think that in America today, when they're thinking through the problem of government. But that's because they've missed the point of our whole way of life.

Who is the anointed sovereign of the United States of America, anointed by Providence to be the ultimate worldly authority in this land? Who?

No. No. Worldly. Worldly. Christ is not a worldly authority. Christ is a Divine Authority. Who is anointed to be the worldly authority here?

The people!

We are anointed to be that authority. Who is the sovereign in America? Who is the king?

Who will ultimately stand before God's bar of judgment to answer for how that authority has been used or abused in this country?

It will not be Bob Dole. And it will not be Bill Clinton. And it will not be any other of our chosen ministers of authority.

It will be us--answering to God for that part of our citizenship which makes us not the subjects, but the sovereigns of these United States; how we use or abuse that authority which He has granted us. And I say that advisedly, too. Because I think as you look back at the history of this country you've GOT to believe that God had a hand in it--no way to get around it. When the Founders said that they were going to put a firm reliance in God's Providence, I think they spoke truer than they knew, and that this land would not be here, could not have survived, could not gone through the vicissitudes of its domestic or international challenges, but that God had in His heart a purpose for this land and for its people.

And in that purpose we may see ourselves playing the role of spectators, playing the role of passive subjects, playing the role of consumers or of victims, but this is not so. Because we were blessed not to live in a land like the old Soviet Union, not to live in a despotism, not to live in a land where the arrogance of power goes unchecked by any higher authority in the hands of other human beings.

We hold that authority. And we hold it by gift not of our strength, not of our wisdom, not of our will, but by the Providence of God Almighty. And how are we acquitting ourselves today? See? This I think is the question being put to us. And the answer that I see coming, and I say this not as a partisan spokesman of any kind--I'm kind of losing that reputation for various reasons anyway [laughter]--but I say this more because I think it's a true observation.

I was reading a survey yesterday which I shared with my listeners on the air that purported to show that parents--they surveyed 500 parents, the parents in the country who answered this survey were not concerned about family values, they didn't care about the teaching of homosexuality, they weren't concerned about abortion. They were just concerned about money issues and whether the government was going to provide day care and so forth and so on. This is what we're told.

Now, it may have had nothing to do with the outcome of that study that it was commissioned and done by the pollsters who poll for President Clinton. [laughter] But it was interesting. It sort of tracked, by the way, with a survey that was done a little earlier when they were surveying parents on their attitude toward the use of drugs by kids and teenagers, and two-thirds of the parents kind of gave a semi-shrug, you know, "Well, I guess they're going to do it. There's nothing we can do about it."

We want to point the finger everywhere in America now. We want to pretend that this one is to blame in the White House and that one is to blame in the Congress. When, I think, we start to wake up, we will realize that the great opportunity for shaping the fate of this nation wasn't placed in the hands of our leaders. It was placed in our hands.

The great responsibility for the decay, for the lack of courage in standing for those moral principles--without which our children are lost in a great wilderness with no northern star--the responsibility for standing for those principles and handing them on does not lie in a congress or a court. It lies rather with the parents. It lies rather with the friends. It lies rather with those of us who could still, by our example or from our experience, speak to the truth of those moral standards without which life cannot be lived in decency or peace.

And how are we acquitting our responsibility? I think you'd have to concluded we don't seem to be doing real well. We have become so obsessed with being friendly and tolerant and nice that we are, in fact, inflicting upon new generations the worst harm we can possibly inflict upon them:  the harm of being born into a world where there is no moral leadership.

And it's not working. And yet we're still being told it doesn't matter.

I know I beat the same old drum that I've been beating for months and months when I try to point out that all of the clamor we are hearing from one side and the other in this great political season about how much people are going to do for the economy, and how much they're going to do for our pocketbook, and what they will do about social security, and how they will handle welfare, and whether they will do this or that with the tax rate. We are a people seemingly obsessed with money, while we watch our culture collapse for reasons that have nothing at all to do with money and that have much to do with the destruction of that moral capital which is far more important, far more enduring, and the loss of which is far more devastating than money.

And what are we to do about this? I think it's fairly easy. The one thing that I feel we have a first responsibility to do is to be clear and serious about those questions which are before us which most deeply affect the moral judgment, the moral conscience of our people.

I mean, you can go wrong in this life--we most of us do. That's what it means to be human and sinners, I guess. But if you retain, in spite of all that, a clear sense of right and wrong, a clear sense of what the standards are, grounded in the end, of course, in a clear sense of who the standards come from and why they must be respected, then you can always turn around. That's the true reason that hope springs eternal. You know, not for some foppish, mindless optimism, but because God's on the throne. And you can turn away from Him sometimes, you can walk down a road that is not His road, but so long as you still have it in mind that He's up there, even when you turn your back on Him, you can turn back again. He'll come looking for you even . . . He'll look very hard, too, until He finds you. There is always hope.

But we don't live in a time when we have turned our back on God. We live in a time when we wish to deny altogether that He exists and has any relevance in human affairs. And from this, it is harder to recover--for, even if you turn around, you will just find yourself going in circles. And this is where we are. So how do we seek a remedy to this?

Now, I think it's two-fold. I think first you must raise those issues that raise the standard of America's moral judgment. This is why I don't understand what's going on today on the issue of abortion. And I'm about to here, I guess, say one of those things that's leading people to believe I'm not nearly as partisan as I ought to be--but I am actually, I'm real partisan. But I try to think of myself as a partisan of truth and a partisan of right, and a partisan of those things that will help this country stay on track. Labels don't matter nearly as much to me as that.

And I look at what's going on in America. I see so many people who purport to be leaders, who purport to want to have an influence, who purport even to be standing up in a good cause and a righteous truth telling us that this is, for some reason, a time when we should back away from our clear articulation of the fundamental moral issues that face America.

I saw an example of it the other night, you know, and I guess these few weeks from the election I'm supposed to shut up about this--but I will not, because this is too dangerous to let it go. Jack Kemp's response on abortion in the vice presidential debate the other night was not just inadequate, it was appalling. And I don't care [applause] . . . and I suspect that will not make me popular in some quarters, but let's go down it. OK? Abortion, in my opinion, is not just a question of how we feel about our children. And it is certainly not a question of some emotional reaction to the fact that our children or our grandchildren have the opportunity to choose life.

I like that. That expression was very interesting. You know, to me it was like saying that we shouldn't fight against slavery in principle because, after all, if you have slavery, there's the opportunity to free your slaves. [applause]

But I also found it appalling for another reason. Apparently, and this is why I believe you have to speak out, because there are people with good hearts. I think Jack has a good heart. There are people with good intentions. I think he has good intentions.

But when you stand up to speak to the American people about this most important moral issue of all, you have got to make GOOD arguments in the RIGHT way. You can't afford to get it wrong.

And giving people the impression that somehow or another we can afford to back off from the issue in principle, and content ourselves to say that it's wonderful that women should have the opportunity to choose life, is to disregard the fundamental moral truth for which we fight:  that the choice with respect to the dignity and worth of life and the rights inherent in our human nature and human being is not a choice that lies in the hands of any woman, or any man, or any human authority whatsoever. For, that choice was made by God, and we do not have the "opportunity" to make it again! [applause]

And I believe as well that we have to be careful how we define our objectives in this life. It is all well and good to say that we want to give to that human life in the womb all the protection that we can, and then to define what is possible, to exclude what is morally right. I don't care if Jack Kemp, or Bill Bennett, or Dan Quayle, or anyone else who purports to be a voice for moral conscience in America tells me that it is "impossible" to pass the Human Life Amendment through this Congress or any other.

It is our moral duty to work for it, because it is right! [applause]

If we mean to hold up a standard before our people and before our young, it cannot be the standard of what is possible today. For, you and I both know--when was it possible, when did it become possible in America to abolish slavery? When did it become possible in America to change the unjust racist discrimination that lay at the root of segregation and things of that kind? When did it become possible?

When did it become possible to found a nation that would be based on the respect for human dignity rather than the power, the wealth, the might, that was in the hands of a few? WHEN did it become possible?

It did not become possible until people, whatever their state, whatever their condition, decided that the possibilities before them would not define their sense of moral right, and that they would be willing to stand up and put their hand in the hand of God Almighty, to change what is possible in light of what He says is right! [applause]

And you see, I think there's something actually at stake that goes beyond even that. Because there is a fundamental divide on issues like the issue of abortion and other moral questions in America. It's not just a question of the moral judgment you make about it. It's also a question of the premises on which you base those moral judgments.

There are some people who want to define what is possible for human life, in terms of all those conditions, all those economic, all those material conditions and circumstances which seem to press hard against the human will, and to make it so difficult for human beings to choose rightly--to even sometimes, I guess, see what's right.

I was thinking about it this morning, in a kind of way, we were . . . I don't know, I was in a Country mood this morning when we were driving in, so I put the radio on this country music station, and there's a song by Reba McEntire playing. And in this song--which was, oh, very sweet melody, very nice voice and so forth--she paints these terrible circumstances in which she was born living in a one room shack, no food, barely able to make ends meet, father deserted the family. And then one night, the mother in desperation goes out, buys some fancy clothes for the daughter with her last cent, puts them on, and then basically tells her that she's got to go out and be nice to men. OK? And it turns out there's this line in it about how, "Well, you know those self-righteous hypocrites may say, may be critical of what I did, or what my mother did to turn me into this, but now I've got the fancy mansion and this and that and the other thing, and boy, that proves . . ."

What does it prove? You know, what it proves is that one person decided they were going to destroy the soul of their child. That one person decided that keeping the body alive was more important than making sure that that which will endure beyond this immortal flesh is kept intact for He who can resurrect the body and make it whole. See.

And we want to give this excuse now to everybody. If your material circumstances are overwhelming and oppressive, then there is no standard of right and wrong that applies to you, and you are exempt, and you are excused. But do you know what this forgets? It forgets the other side of that wonderful grant of dignity. If we do believe as our great founding document says, that "all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," if we do believe that there is within each and every human being that inextinguishable kernel of dignity which comes, as it must, from the truth that there is present to each of us the grace and will of the Creator, Himself, then what we call upon in order to assert our rights, we must also respect when it comes time to define our responsibilities.

If we are wont to act as if we stand before all these material forces alone, then it is understandable that we see in them an excuse for every depravity. But if and when we remember what our Founders did--indeed, remember, that no matter what the odds, we do not stand alone, and that if we are determined to stand for right, then we stand with He who has the greatest power of all. And there is no excuse for depravity. We do not have to surrender even in the face of overwhelming circumstances, because God is the most overwhelming circumstance of all.

Why have we forgotten this?

We listen now to voices who want us to believe that it is possible to look upon human beings without taking account of their moral capacity, of their moral essence--which is to say, without taking account of that in us which is, indeed, the image of God, Himself.

Is this right? I don't know if it's right for other times and other places, but I know it's wholly wrong for these United States. For, we are the nation conceived in liberty--dedicated, therefore, to proving that human beings can, indeed, rise above those things which might otherwise determine our will in spite of ourselves. If we think that we can do it alone as some people have tried to tell us in the last 30-40 years, then we're wrong. But if we remember that we do it with God, then we will not go wrong, and we will not be content with those who tell us that we must settle in our goals for less than what is right. We should not do what we are able to do. We should strive to do what we ought, for God will make us able.

And that is the principle that I would recommend to all who are dedicated as we must be, not only to the pro-life cause but to the cause of America's moral renewal. I think we still stand as a people who can, if we will, call upon God's aid and He will hear us. But if we surrender to evil principles because it looks as if today we cannot achieve the good, then we surely shall never achieve it.

I don't know what others will do. The choices get harder and harder as the days go by, but I do know this:  that with Josue [Joshua] I stand where I have stood, where I must stand regardless of my own sinful nature, "as for me and my house, whatever we do, whatever we must suffer, however much we fail, we shall serve the Lord." And if as a people, if as a nation we remember that this was our dedication, too, then we shall serve Him and we shall save ourselves, and we shall pass to our children that freedom which is His blessing, when we respect His will.

Thank you very much. [long applause, standing ovation]

Question & Answer session

Blewett:  Mr. Keyes is chairman of the Declaration Foundation, there is some information on that right outside the door, a folder and some other material. You can do that after lunch if you care to do that. He has graciously consented to a question and answer session, and I have witnessed some of those and they're very good.

Rather than me trying to do any moderating, I think the best thing to do in this case is just to ask Ambassador Keyes if you would just to come to the podium and kind of take things as they come at him and answer those things. And I would ask you this, please, don't make any statements or any position statements. If you have a question, ask Ambassador Keyes and allow him to answer that question. I would ask that favor of you. Thank you very much. Ambassador?

Keyes:  Thank you.

Question:  [inaudible question about the time of Keyes' radio show]

Keyes:  That's an easy one! Where is my program and when? Well, it comes on Eastern Time, ten to one. Where it is, is a question. It's networked by Salem Radio Network, we're on about 35 stations, now I think, around the country, in different parts. And what the list is at any given moment, I don't know. We don't have a station in this area yet, but we are in, I don't know, Tennessee, Idaho, Texas, California, so forth and so on, so they're working on it.

Yes?

Question:  For whom should pro-lifers vote? [uproarious laughter and applause]

Keyes:  Well, ah, far be it from me, etcetera. But, I . . . let me explain the dilemma, first of all. I mean, you all know, I think, who I shall vote for. I will vote on November--what is it? 5th?--I will vote on November whatever-it-is, for Bob Dole. This I will do. [applause]

Well, I have to tell you, and this is probably why I'm not being invited to go around and speak, because I say that and then I have to explain it. [laughter]

No, I really do, because people say that we have a choice between the lesser of two evils and all that these days, and that we have to choose the lesser one. I say this may be true, and in certain circumstances that's certainly what we ought to do, and I hope that's the case. But we have to be wary of another kind of choice which is not quite the same as lesser of two evils. It's a choice between the devil and the devil without his tail.

Remember how they used to say, that the devil--you know, you think the devil comes before you and he looks all ugly and horrible and so that you feel repulsed by him? That's not the devil. The devil comes before you with a sweet face, looking really seductive, offering you things you think you want and saying things you think you believe. And, and it's not 'til latter that the clincher comes, because he's hidden his tail away.

So what we have to be sure of is that we are, in fact, voting for the lesser of two evils, not for the devil and the devil without his tail. Because the devil without his tail is an evil that we presume to be good. And the evil presumed to be good can do greater harm than the evil known as such. At least for those of us who can be deceived, and we are human beings. This is part of the definition of our flesh.

So, I say, be careful. And being careful--does that mean that I recommend against voting for Bob Dole? No.

I do recommend, however, making sure you hold feet to the fire. Making sure that you don't allow anyone to build up into false spokesman people who are not speaking the truth. OK? That's why I said what I just said. Jack Kemp, I hope, is still a friend of mine--I'm not sure. I have great admiration for him, supported him in 1988, believe he is true and right on many things, and a good man.

However, when he says what he said, and others purport to make that into the pro-life position, he sets up a good cause for a defeat that will be bad for all of us, and I can't stand by silently while that happens. And I will assume that it is all unintentional. But having watched this particular little effort go on in the Republican Party for the last two and a half years, and hearing the other night the very same party line that I have heard for those two and a half years:  "Retreat from the issue of principle, concentrate on reducing the numbers of abortion, on the phony excuse, that we must persuade, we shouldn't intimidate . . ."

You know when I hear that, just as I heard it the other night, I think to myself, well, that's all well and good, here's Jack telling me that he and Bob Dole are not going to intimidate the American people, they're going to persuade them, but then I'm thinking to myself, and there is Jack, standing before tens of millions of Americans:  "Jack? If you're going to persuade them, now would be a good time." [laughter and applause]

See? Now, that was not the moment to tell me you were GOING to do it. That was the moment to DO it. See? And this bothers me. We have folks there--I didn't see Al Gore standing up there making excuses about his pro-abortion position. He just said:  "We're never, ever, ever going to surrender the woman's right to choose." That's what he said.

You know? I think one could speak with at least half that amount of conviction for the truth, and do it in a way that was supported by good arguments if you bother to make them. But only take . . . you know, they had only three minutes, I think, per answer. I can make the pro-life case now in about two, two and a half--and make it very clear, and very good, very strong in a way that no American could ignore. They might want to deny it, but they couldn't ignore it, because it starts with that which is the fundamental truth of our nation's life:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed . . ." not by their mother's choice, but by their Creator's will, with their unalienable rights.

Simple as that. So, I say who I'm going to support, but I also say, "Let us be careful." The people in the press want to build this up:  "Well, we're watching the year 2000, and the face-off and the match-up, and this and that. Well, thank God that there are a few people, including folks who's initials are probably, oh, I don't know, Pat Buchanan and other people--" [laughter] "--who may believe they have some other ideas about the year 2000."

But, but I would say this, leave aside all the ambitions of human beings. You are the sovereigns. You have to make a right judgment about who your ministers will be. For, these people who serve in office are not our rulers, they are our ministers. Chosen by us, appointed by us. And when we make that choice, as the king makes the choice of his ministers, we are responsible. And we must be responsible, first of all, not to our pocketbooks, and not to our greed, and not to our licentious desires and behaviors. We must be responsible, first and foremost, to God. And, and I believe that with that before us, we must go with open eyes into the voting booth--voting, in this particular case, to, I hope, try to exclude the evil we know, without assuming a good we can't yet be sure of.

Yes?

Question:  Why aren't you supporting Howie Phillips?

Keyes:  I don't support Howie because I disagree with him about what's possible. You see, the Republican Party at the grassroots is now, by and large, a strongly conservative pro-life party. It is. Why would I abandon all the people I know around this country--[applause]--who actually have won control of more than 30 state party structures?! I'm going to turn my back on them and go to some third party movement at the very moment when their heart and their enthusiasm are creating the time when we shall push aside this equivocating leadership?--[applause and cheers]--We shall push them aside. We shall tell them to go.

Oh, yeah. I will bite my tongue and I will go into the voting booth one more time to vote for folks who DON'T have the heart and DON'T have the conviction. But come the year 2000, we will NOT stand for it again!! [applause and cheers]

And I'll tell you, I believe that neither will many, many, many, many tens of thousands of Republicans. You see, the overwhelming majority of people I met at the convention this time, a convention that was more overwhelmingly pro-life moral conservative than the one that nominated George Bush, and yet what was put in the platform, what was true of the heart didn't show even for a moment from the podium.

This is the rift! It's a rift between a leadership that has yet to catch up with the times. And the times that have already passed them by. I will not be fooled at this moment of victory into abandoning the fight. That's a mistake. If we concentrate all our fire in the next four years on working with those good hearted people who have already laid the groundwork in the Republican Party for the right direction for this party to go, then come the year 2000, that direction will show and all the oligarchic pro-abortion moneybags in the world will not stop us this time! [applause and cheers]

Question:  [inaudible]

Keyes:  Well, see, but yes and no. I think we're going too far if we say that pro-abortion Republicans have the levers of power. If that were simply the case, then one of them would be on the ticket and the pro-life plank would not be in the platform. The levers of power are not in the hands of pro-abortion Republicans. The ear of a leadership is pretty much in their pocket--people who have convinced themselves that the American people can't take the truth, that they will not be persuaded of it. They have their little focus groups, and their focus groups tell them that, "Well, when you bring up these issues it all goes negative."

Funny thing about that. There were focus groups for the various debates that were held during the primary season, and though the media never told you this, if you were watching on some of the stations where they did the instant reaction that was graphed on the screen, which responses got the best reaction? I did. ["yeah," from the audience]

And it wasn't because actually I'm such a handsome guy. I think people can see better than that. It was actually because there was a little glimmering of what people felt in their hearts in what I had to say. So we've got a leadership that has convinced itself of a truth that is not true. Now things that they believe are true that just ain't so:  "Women in this country overwhelmingly want abortion"--things that just ain't so. "Black Americans want to hear all about how much, you know, free enterprise welfare we're going to hand out to them, rather than about what we shall do to help restore the integrity of their families, the safety of their streets, the decency of their schools, the strength of their children's heart"--things they believe that just ain't so.

See, and I think we have to build our approach on the truth. And so I would say that one thing they don't have:  the levers of power. The grassroots people have the opportunity to transform things, and they already are. People are getting out working in the grassroots organizations--whether it's the Christian Coalition, Concerned Women, Eagle Forum, the taxpayers' groups and other things, and of course, participating in the formal structures of the parties--in order to promote and advance the things that we share in common as a people, regardless of our partisan labels. And there are such things.

There's a moral common ground in America, that those who want only to talk only to us about money seem to wish to either ignore or destroy. Why is that they are so afraid to let us see that we have a common heart for a certain sense of justice? I wonder about this. They want to talk to us all about these money issues, where they can play one class against another, one group against another, one race against another. And they don't wish to remind us of those moral goals, young and decent children, for instance, raised to respect their elders and to live with a sense that there is an Authority to which they must answer that goes beyond their own passions and their own desires.

How many parents would deny that this is the desire of their heart for their young children? Is it only white parents, or black parents, or Democrat parents, or Republican parents? No. I think it's pretty much ALL parents. And what does this mean? It means we have common ground. Not common ground over what our greedy-heart desires tomorrow in the way of welfare for the middle class or tax cuts for anybody else but a common heart in the way of what we desire to see, lived out as the truth of our children's lives whether they are rich or poor. Because whether you are rich or poor, you can still be good. And God will still reward you for it.

Have we forgotten this? I don't think so. So, I think we can build on that. And at the grassroots, the change is already being made. I'm looking at candidates, whom I've been going out and trying to campaign for, who are running, some at the local level, some at the state level, some like Al Salvi and others for the Senate of the United States, who are standing for what is right, unequivocally, and contrary to what they would expect, win in primaries and being more than competitive in their elections. You know, I'm praying to God that one or two of them will get by this time, and we'll see a victory, but even if we don't, they will have already proven that those who say it just doesn't work are wrong, we just have to work a little harder.

So I would say, look for what there is around you. Look for those people who are standing for that which we share in our hearts to be right and work for them for the school board, for the county council, for the state legislature, for the Senate and the Congress. You know, and don't let people fool you either into thinking that some label stuck on somebody is an automatic indication of what their heart is. Test the temper of that heart against your own conscience of what is right and then work for it.

I would say there that we must get over this calculating business, you know? Now, I am not failing to support Howie Phillips because I think he will lose. That's irrelevant to me. You know, if I thought that that was the right way to go in terms of achieving the objectives we want to achieve, then I'd go there and I'd work there no matter what.

And that's what I think we have to do. Because, through our work we change the possibilities. That is, in a sense, the best meaning of America, isn't it? Through our work we change the possibilities. We don't just accept them. We define what we think is right and we move toward it, and before we know it we have done what others say is not possible. We have changed the world for the better. And at the grassroots in this country we CAN do that, so long as we don't get ourselves talked out of it.

Yes?

Question:  In an era where there is only one bishop that is exercising his right of excommunication and in a country where there are obvious--everybody knows that there are judges by the hundreds that are incompetent, why are there no politicians that are calling for impeachment and conviction of these turkeys that call themselves judges?

Keyes:  Well, you know, I don't know that that's not true. I think there is now growing--and with due credit to Judge Bork and others, because in his recent book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, he actually makes an argument that we ought to remember. This is not inventing anything, this is simply remembering the real nature of our constitutional system. Judges are not appointed to be despots. They too must in the end answer to the authority of the sovereign in this country. And that means that mechanisms exist for the people to look at judges and say, not only, "You are incompetent," not only, "You have committed some felony"--see, we've gotten into this notion that the only way you take a judge off the bench is if he commits a felony. So, he can abuse the public good to his heart's content. Is this true? No it's not. Judges don't have a license to KILL our Republic. And this is exactly what so many of them seem to be doing, not only in the way they are handling questions of criminal justice, but in the way they are mishandling questions of social order.

You know, where have the greatest threats to our conscience come from in America? They didn't come from legislatures. And in the end, they didn't even come from people in the streets and byways. They came from the courts, and they still come from the courts today. We're sitting here worrying, all of us, worrying about whether the phony concept of "gay marriage" is going to be thrust down our, our maw. Why? Because some judge in Hawaii may decide it so. You see what I'm saying? So, so I think you're absolutely right. We need to remember that the impeachment power exists in order also for us to call judges to account when they depart from basic principles of social moral order.

This is our right. And I think we can as people, as leaders, as politicians, whatever we want to be, we can start talking about this. We certainly can. During the course of my campaign I did too, and talked to people about the fact that we have got to start recognizing, for instance with the Supreme Court--who gave the Supreme Court the authority to be the absolute, ultimate arbiter of what the Constitution says? Does it say that somewhere in the Constitution? It does NOT.

The Constitution establishes three EQUAL branches. How can they be equal if one of them gets to interpret the contract? Is it an equal partnership if one of its provisions is, if there's any dispute that arises under this contract, partner "A" will decide everything and partner "B" must do absolutely what he's told? Is that equality? I don't think so. And that's not how the Founders put it together. The Founders put it together so that the Congress would exercise its judgment of what was Constitutional, the President would exercise the judgment of the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court would exercise judgment with regard to particular cases. And when there was a dispute between them, if the President felt "X" and the Supreme Court said "Y," you could look at the Court the way Andy Jackson did:  "The Supreme Court likes that decision. Let them enforce it." [laughter]

And, what do you do then? What do you do to that President? Is that President a scoff-law in all of this? No. That President is a President who has a different understanding of the Constitution than the court. And, and what happens to that President? Well, it kind of depends. If he has enough folks in the Congress who agree with his understanding, then he sits right there and governs just like nothing was wrong. If he doesn't have enough friends in the Congress who agree with him, then they'll all stand up and call him a scoff-law and impeach him. This is the risk you take when you're President, but that is the risk you're supposed to take under our Constitution. And our gutless-wonder Presidents, I have all respect for all of them, but in this respect they didn't have the guts to exert their executive authority. And they should have, because they have destroyed the integrity of balance between the branches, and they have implicitly granted to the Supreme Court a role never intended for it that is destructive of the fabric of our constitutional life.

And so I think both the Congress and the President need to wake up here. [applause]

One last question way in the back of the room there. Yes?

Question:  [inaudible]

Keyes:  Well, that's because that's all that's on offer. I honestly believe that. That's all that's been offered to them. You know, what else has been offered to them? Nothing else. We have right now, on the one hand, people who are saying, you know, we want the government to spend all the money, and on the other hand we want to give it back to you so you can spend it, but money is the only issue. Now I happen to agree with those people who think we ought to basically respect the fact that the government doesn't have any money in this country except what it takes from us! [laughter]

And we shouldn't be real pleased and grateful to them on one side or another when they decide they're going to let us keep what is already ours. [laughter]

This whole discussion of taxes and everything really amazes me. Do we have no respect for ourselves anymore, that we are actually going to sit here and be taken for granted and allow these folks to talk as if they're doing us a favor when they let us keep what we earn in the sweat of our brow? You know, Lincoln said it of slaves--we will no longer even say it of ourselves?--that in the right to eat the bread that you have earned in the sweat of your brow, you are the equal of every human being. But not anymore. With the income tax and all, you're not the equal of the lowliest blue bureaucrat apparently.

So I happen to agree with that view, but is it what is the most pressing and important issue of our time?

No? I found it amazing the other night, here again amazing--I don't know if I should be amazed any more, but a question was asked about the spitting episode, remember the famous spitting episode? [laughter]

Now fabled in song and story. [laughter]

Well, the fabled spitting episode, and I was appearing on Tony Snow's show on FOX last weekend, the weekend before, I forget which, and it turned out that Bill Bennett was going to be on, and he wanted to talk about the spitting episode, and to talk about how it was an example of the decline of our, sort of, civility and all of that.

Now I think this question of civility is important. You know, civility is an important thing. But when they told me this was going to be the question that we would discuss, I kind of said, "Well, you know, if I wanted to--we live in a country where, mothers are allowed to reach into the womb and murder their unborn children, where a serial killer under the guise of compassion is committing murder after murder, and we're debating with ourselves over the significance of it all. We live in a country where we're even debating the questions of euthanasia, infanticide and all of these kinds of things, and we have to look for a spitting episode to prove that we're in decline?" [laughter]

I don't know about this--[applause]-- but--(applause swells and continues)--and I got to tell you, if it had been me the other night when they asked Jack and Al Gore this question about the spitting episode . . . now, Al had studied his William Bennett and he looked right into the camera and he said, "He should have been suspended and they should have stood for integrity," and so forth.

Now, even though I am from Maryland, I happen to believe this is true. Just as I believe they ought to play over again game one of the playoff series. [applause and laughter]

But, you'll notice, not having stood for principle in the one case, the Orioles now can't get principle in the other. What can I say? Moral consistency would have its advantages! [laughter]

But what is the point I am making? What if Jack, instead of taking that question off into whatever Utopian spaces he did take it, he had looked into the camera and he had said, when he asked him about the decline of civility, "Well yeah, I think spitting in an umpire's face when you're upset with him is a decline in civility. I also think that taking a baby and sticking a knife into its skull and spreading it and sucking out the brains is a rather uncivil thing to do." [applause]

I think, if he had said THAT, he would have laid before the American people, in a way that just went by their defenses, a truth that they need to face. You see? So I believe that there are all different kinds of ways to explain why people are making the choice they are making. It's because those who have the platform don't appear to want to put before them the right choice. One further point, I know I'm running late but think about this:  character issue, right? And they keep talking about "the character issue" like it's an issue of, "Are you going to get up and talk about Bill Clinton's trysts with this one and that one, are you going to attack him for the--?"

The press would love it if somebody just got out there and started slashing and burning in some, you know, personal ad hominem attacks against Bill Clinton. You know, that's partly, of course, because the press in this case doesn't care about the TRUTH of these attacks, they just sort of discredit you immediately if you do them. So they're urging Dole:  "Go out, go out, do the character issue." You know, they really want him to go.

But, the thing is, that's not the character issue. The issue of character before us is not the character of Bill Clinton. The issue of character before us is OUR character. What kind of a people have we become? That's the question. And if we want to discuss that issue, then we raise the issues that raise the standard of America's moral judgment. We raise the issue of how we are treating children in the womb. We raise the issue of whether the proper way to treat people in pain is to kill them for their pains. We raise the issue of whether we are going to regard the elderly as discardable because they can no longer move as fast or see quite as clearly with their eyes, so we will disregard the fact that they see much more clearly with the eyes of their spirit and their heart and their experience.

What kind of people have we become? Are we a people who value above all the things of our pocketbook, while all around us the things of our heart and of our spirit are perishing? Are we a people who have nothing better to offer to our children in the way of a vision and a dream, than a materialistic dream built upon what clothes they will wear, and what cars they will drive, and what computers they will own? When, in point of fact, there stands before them that eternal question, "What kind of people shall they be in the eyes of Almighty God?"

What kind of people have we become? See, that's the character issue. And I think that anybody could stand out there and win this election right now, if they were only honest enough to put that issue before the American people, because I think people are hungry to deal with it. So many are dealing with it already in their own families, in their own churches, in their own communities and schools, they're starting to take over once again from the forces that are destroying our moral fiber.

It's going to take some time for this national leadership to catch up. But you know, they're in the position leaders have always been. You remember that famous story of the ancient Greek guy who saw a crowd, a mob flowing through a city--I think it was Rome, or something--and he turned to one of his friends and said, "Where are my people going so I can lead them?" [laughter]

You know, I think that that's the position that our leaders are in right now, so why don't you and I just show them where they ought to go! [standing ovation, thunderous applause, cheers]

Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.