Alan Keyes
March 3, 1995

Now, it's customary to tell people how glad you are to be here, but during Republican gatherings these days it is almost superfluous. People are so glad to be at Republican gatherings these days that all kinds of people are coming--people who didn't used to be Republicans are showing up at Republican gatherings.

I was just speculating at the table there that the way things are going now, I think the best strategy for the Democrats in the Congress might be tomorrow that they all declare themselves to be Republicans, and then see if they have any better luck in the caucus than they did in the country.

I kind of doubt they will, because in 1994 the American people did send a very clear and unequivocal message--and that message was a resounding rejection of Bill Clinton and everything he stands for and everybody he stands with. [applause]

And the Democrats, during the election campaign, you remember, they understood that. Because just as fast as they were running, they were running away from him.

But you know, that tells us something that ought to give us pause for thought. The election in 1994 was about Bill Clinton.

And the American people decided they didn't want any more of him.

And if his name had been on the ballot, you can bet he wouldn't be in the White House right now.

And that means, that approaching 1996, as we won the Congress in 1994, the White House is ours to win or lose, and you and I both know it. [applause]

But that tells you that, for better or worse, the election in 1996 is not going to be about Bill Clinton. So what is it going to be about? I think it is going to be about America. I think it is going to be about the American people.

Now, of course, the press never treats it that way. They treat our elections as if they are about "this one running," and "that one winning," and "that one raising money," and it ain't so. When we go to the polls every two years and four years, we as a people are doing what very few people in the history of the world have been privileged to do. We are taking the fate of our land in our hands and deciding what we shall do with it.

And when we consider what we are going to do in those elections, we shouldn't be treating them as though they were the "Belmont Stakes," and that what matters is who wins or who loses.

No, what matters is who stands where, and whether we can stand for them; who stands for what and whether the future of this country can stand with their principles! [applause]

And I say that it is about time that we had some candidates for President who would talk about that future, and talk about that vision, and talk about the character of this people and what is happening to it, because we know the truth! We can talk all we want, and as Republicans we talk a lot, and I have been out there in the last several years championing all the causes of limited government. I have been fighting against government waste and fighting for lower taxes and organizing people at the grass roots to march in the street to demand their rightful place in this system.

But every time I spoke to them, I made it clear that I didn't think that what we were fighting for was in fact about the taxes, and I didn't think it was the budgets. I don't even think it is about limited government. Because the reason that I favor limited government is not that it is some end in itself. It is because limited government is the foundation and paradigm of all our freedom.

Limited government is where the Founders placed this nation, and where, as a people, we belong. But, you know, if we are going to sustain that vision we offered the American people, then I think it is about time that we remembered something. And I address this especially, if I may say, to all my colleagues who are running, and to all the folks who sit in Washington today debating all the complex issues of our time.

If we are going to win the battle for limited government, then we had better remember what our Founders understood when they framed the Constitution to set up this limited government of the people, by the people, for the people. They saw it and spoke with Adams when he said that this Constitution was framed for a moral and a religious people, and that it is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other! [applause]

We cannot fight for limited government, we cannot expect that limited government will be a blessing and not a curse, unless we join to that battle the same battle that they fought every time they opened their mouths--and that was a battle to guarantee the strong, the decent, the good character of the American people! [applause]

If we are a people who can no longer tell right from wrong, and stand for right; if we are a people who can no longer tell justice from injustice, and stand for justice; then we will be a people no longer capable or fit to govern ourselves! [applause]

And I believe, that after 30 and 40 and 50 years of misrule by Democrat liberals who made government into God and people into slaves, we have come to a great crisis of self-government in America. We have come to a parting of the ways, and down one road lies the totalitarian utopian vision of freedom lost, and down the other lies the Founders' vision of self-government regained, and we stand, now, to choose.

But you know what the issues shall be that determine our choice? They shall not be the issues of whether the budget is big or small; they will not be the issue of whether the taxes are cut or raised, though all those issues are important. They will be the issues of how we understand our freedom. Is it something that we can abuse in any way we choose, even at the expense of our dearest principles? Or is it something that we must wield with respect for what they laid down at the beginning, and no one likes to talk about anymore: the laws of nature and of nature's God?

They did not set this country on a course that said, "We worship our freedom." They set it on a course that said, "We worship our God, and He gives us our freedom." And it is time that we remembered that! [applause]

And that means as well that, difficult as it may be, hard as it may be, divisive as it may seem to some, the vision that will unite this people across every line of race and color and creed is not a vision that we have to make up out of whole cloth or some book that somebody wrote yesterday. It's a vision that was laid down at the beginning--a vision of unalienable rights that come from God, a vision of a people strong enough, a vision of a people self-disciplined enough to wield that freedom with respect for themselves, and it was a vision, as well, of a people who knew that the burden was on them in the end to sustain that freedom in their choices and in their moral lives.

And that's why I have to tell you that, though some of the leaders of this party would like us to run towards some undefined middle, and away from the issues that have in fact given us our victories for a decade and more, I would suggest that we stand where we have stood up to now, on a platform that tells our children what we know ourselves: that we do not have the right to do what is wrong, that we cannot stand on the unprincipled platform that does not defend the rights of the unborn and the obligation of every mother and every father to their unborn and living children!! [applause]

And that is not some issue over there in the corner, my friends. There are people who think that's an afterthought; there are people who think we can shrug it off today and bring it back tomorrow. But that issue of whether we are going to enforce the obligations that God's law says we all have toward each other and our children, that notion runs through every problem that we have--it's the welfare problem, it's the crime problem, it's the health problem, it's the problem of a people gone out of control who will lose their freedom if they do not respect the principles that will bring that control back to them again! [applause]

So I say this--and if I do get into this race, it will be the platform I run on, tired as some people are of hearing about it.

I want to see power returned to the people of this country, you bet. And I have fought for it for years and been vilified by someone I deared. But more than that, and more than anything, I want us to become once again a people worthy of that power.

Because we have within ourselves the fear of God and the respect for His laws of justice that have made this nation great and strong and free. [applause]

And so I say that my mission will be to restore this country's values, to rebuild this country's character, to renew in this nation the moral identity on which we can truly unite as an American people, and that if and when we do, we will indeed be worthy of that vision they set down at the beginning--that in our successful quest for real self-government, we would sustain the last best hope of earth. (standing ovation)