November 7, 1997

[Partial transcript]

Arguing for Infanticide

The good news and my opening theme are actually the same today. The good news is that another important truth has been confirmed. And I'm going to spend the better part of the time here in my opening talking about it. But first let me set it in context. It is in the context of the ongoing argument, which obviously comes up every now and again on this show because of my own interests and predilections, over the subject and issue of abortion. Which, contrary to what some folks would like to believe, is becoming ever more important in the political life and discussion of America, because the truth will out--that's why that's occurring. And truth has a way of eventually having its own way with us.

And something occurred, in the course of the past week. And it occurred so quietly that I didn't even hear about it, until I read an article in the Washington Post which my wife showed me. To show you how these things creep up on you, I went through the paper yesterday, didn't even notice it. Isn't it wonderful to have an observant spouse? Anyway, my wife pointed it out to me, and I read it through, and I said, "gosh, this is a momentous occasion."

And I say it is a momentous occasion because it is the first appearance, and the first confirmation, of truth that I and others have been pointing out to people for a long time. We were dismissed, in various ways: "This isn't going to happen; this is exaggeration, etc., etc. And now, as in other cases, this is being confirmed.

And to prove this, I'm going to do something I almost never do on the program. I don't believe I've ever done it before. I am going to read an entire article to you, because I think it is that important that you hear it. It's an article by a senior writer at the National Journal, named Michael Kelly--not known for his conservative predilections or anything--writing in the Washington Post--a paper not known for any kind of conservatism whatsoever, except the willingness to conserve liberal presidents at the expense of truth, integrity and honesty. But aside from that, no conservatism that I've ever noticed.

The title of the article is "Arguing for Infanticide." And are y'all ready? I want you to listen carefully to this; it's probably going to take me a couple of segments. This violates all the rules--Alan is about to violate all the rules of talk radio, once again. We just throw out the rule book, do things that aren't supposed to be done. I'm going to read you this article.

And I honestly believe that y'all are intelligent and interested enough to want to hear something that constitutes, I think, a shocking new plateau in American life, that portends such a dark and forbidding future that we need to stop and think about this, because it is happening to US now. This is not Nazi Germany, or anyplace else; this is happening to US. Okay? Now listen to this:

Arguing for Infanticide

Michael Kelly

Thursday, November 6, 1997; Page A23 The Washington Post

Of all the arguments advanced against the legalization of abortion, the one that always struck me as the most questionable is the most consequential: that the widespread acceptance of abortion would lead to a profound moral shift in our culture, a great devaluing of human life. This seemed to me dubious on general principle: Projections of this sort almost always turn out to be wrong because they fail to grasp that, in matters of human behavior, there is not really any such thing as a trendline. People change to meet new realities and thereby change reality.

Thus, for the environmental hysterics of the 1970s, the nuclear freezers of the 1980s and the Perovian budget doomsayers of the 1990s, the end that was nigh never came. So, with abortion, why should a tolerance for ending human life under one, very limited, set of conditions necessarily lead to an acceptance of ending human life under other, broader terms?

This time, it seems, the pessimists were right. On Sunday, Nov. 2, an article in the New York Times, the closest thing we have to the voice of the intellectual establishment, came out for killing babies. I am afraid that I am sensationalizing only slightly. The article by Steven Pinker in the Times' Magazine did not go quite so far as to openly recommend the murder of infants, and printing the article did not constitute the Times' endorsement of the idea. But close enough, close enough.

What Pinker, a professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and what the Times treated as a legitimate argument, was a thoroughly sympathetic treatment of this modest proposal: Mothers who kill their newborn infants should not be judged as harshly as people who take human life in its later stages because newborn infants are not persons in the full sense of the word, and therefore do not enjoy a right to life. Who says that life begins at birth?

"To a biologist, birth is as arbitrary a milestone as any other," Pinker breezily writes. "No, the right to life must come, the moral philosophers say, from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess. One such trait is having a unique sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people. Other traits include an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death and to express the choice not to die. And there's the rub: our immature neonates don't possess these traits any more than mice do."

Pinker notes that "several moral philosophers have concluded that neonates are not persons, and thus neonaticide should not be classified as murder," and he suggests his acceptance of this view, arguing that "the facts don't make it easy" to legitimately outlaw the killing of infants.

Pinker's casually authoritative mention of "the facts" is important. Because Pinker is no mere ranter from the crackpot fringe but a scientist. He is, in fact, a respected explicator of the entirely mainstream and currently hot theory of evolutionary psychology, and the author of "How the Mind Works," a just-published, doubtlessly seminal, exceedingly fat book on the subject.

How the mind works, says Pinker, is that people are more less hard-wired to behave as they do by the cumulative effects of the human experience. First cousins to the old Marxist economic determinists, the evolutionary psychologists are behavioral determinists. They believe in a sort of Popeye's theory of human behavior: I do what I do because I yam what I yam because I wuz what I wuz.

This view is radical; it seeks to supplant both traditional Judeo-Christian morality and liberal humanism with a new "scientific" philosophy that denies the idea that all humans are possessed of a quality that sets them apart from the lower species, and that this quality gives humans the capacity and responsibility to choose freely between right and wrong. And it is monstrous. And, judging from the writings of Pinker and his fellow determinists on the subject of infanticide, it may be the most thoroughly dishonest construct anyone has ever attempted to pass off as science.

Pinker's argument was a euphemized one. The more blunt argument is made by Michael Tooley, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, whom Pinker quotes. In his 1972 essay "Abortion and Infanticide," Tooley makes what he calls "an extremely plausible answer" to the question: "What makes it morally permissible to destroy a baby, but wrong to kill an adult?" Simple enough: Personhood does not begin at birth. Rather, "an organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity."

Some would permit the killing of infants "up to the time an organism learned how to use certain expressions," but Tooley finds this cumbersome and would simply establish "some period of time, such as a week after birth, as the interval during which infanticide will be permitted."

[BREAK]

KEYES: I'm going through an article, right now, written by Michael Kelly in the Washington Post yesterday, talking about an article that appeared in the New York Times' Sunday magazine section. An article by a man named Steven Pinker, who is an "evolutionary psychologist," and who has made an argument, as I and Kelly have been presenting it to you, that essentially says "infanticide is okay, and here are the reasons why we shouldn't hold it against mothers who kill their newborns."

Now why is this significant? People have surely tried to make these kinds of arguments before; we don't pay much attention; why should we take this seriously? Because it is being made by a supposedly reputable--indeed, trendy--scientist; it was published in, as Kelly argues, what is regarded by some--wrongly, I believe, but still--as the "voice of America's intellectual establishment." It's actually the voice of America's intellectual corruption. But as the voice of America's intellectual corruption, this gives us a very good idea of how far that corruption has gone.

And, my friends, it's unbelievable far. And we're not done yet. You thought we were finished! You thought it couldn't get worse! It does. Let me continue with this piece. This is Michael Kelly, now; we're going to continue. We have already gotten to the point where he is quoting from this argument that says "well, you know, we don't know when you could start permitting the killing of infants, or up to what point." But he figures a week is okay. Let's make it a week. Just arbitrarily. And then he goes on. Listen to this:

And Tooley does not bother with Pinker's pretense that what is under discussion here is only a rare act of desperation, the killing of an unwanted child by a frightened, troubled mother. No, no, no. If it is moral to kill a baby for one, it is moral for all. Indeed, the systematic, professionalized use of infanticide would be a great benefit to humanity. "Most people would prefer to raise children who do not suffer from gross deformities or from severe physical, emotional, or intellectual handicaps," writes eugenicist Tooley. "If it could be shown that there is no moral objection to infanticide the happiness of society could be significantly and justifiably increased."

To defend such an unnatural idea, the determinists argue that infanticide is in fact natural: In Pinker's words, "it has been practiced and accepted in most cultures throughout history." This surprising claim is critical to the argument that the act of a mother killing a child is a programmed response to signals that the child might not fare well in life (because of poverty, illegitimacy or other factors). And it is a lie.

In fact, although millions of mothers give birth every year under the sort of adverse conditions that Pinker says trigger the "natural" urge to kill the baby, infanticide is extremely rare in all modern societies, and is universally treated as a greatly aberrant act, the very definition of a moral horror. The only cultures that Pinker can point to in which infanticide is widely "practiced and accepted" are those that are outside the mores of Western civilization: ancient cultures and the remnants of ancient cultures today, tribal hunter-gatherer societies.

And so goes the entire argument, a great chain of dishonesty, palpable untruth piled upon palpable untruth. "A new mother," asserts Pinker, "will first coolly assess the infant and her situation and only in the next few days begin to see it as a unique and wonderful individual." Yes, that was my wife all over: cool as a cucumber as she assessed whether to keep her first-born child or toss him out the window. As George Orwell said once of another vast lie, "You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool."

KEYES: I hope you all got the true impact of this, because when I read it, it was unhappily both a confirmation and a kick in the stomach. And it tells you what happens--and I have predicted this. I mean, I have predicted this for such a long while. I can't say that it surprises me, in terms of working out the logic of the abortion position, because that logic is clear and ineluctable in its ultimate consequence. And this, I predict, is not the end of it. Once you have reclaimed for human judgment the right to decide what humanity shall be respected and what shall not, there is no limit to what may happen, except such limits as are defined in a given circumstance by human ingenuity and the limited qualities of demagoguery. In other words, the best intellects, the best demagogues, who ultimately succumb to the willingness to make these arguments, will come up with more and more clever ways of deluding and persuading people to accept their view.

And then, what stands in the way of the massive abuse of humanity? Nothing. If you are clever enough, can get enough people on your side, you can, with great moral self-righteousness, exterminate people by the millions. Because they are not human--or human enough.

Now, one would think that it wouldn't be at all hard to impress this truth on people at the end of the twentieth century. We look back on the years of the twentieth century and what do we find? We find that in Nazi Germany, this progression exactly happened. And it led exactly to a program that ultimately attempted the extermination of millions upon millions of human beings.

I have said this repeatedly over the years. And, of course, it was dismissed. "Oh, no. That's exaggeration. That's alarmism. That's the extreme right-wing religious fringe." But it's not. It's simply cold, clear common sense--applied to a situation where we have released human judgment and will from the constraint of respecting a higher authority than human judgment and will.

Tell human beings that we are in charge, and they are very clever about making sure that that ultimately leads to the conclusion that anything goes that they feel like doing today. And, even the most horrible things, things that are contemplated instinctively as the great crimes, become conscionable, become arguable, become tolerable, become permissible, become necessary. And this is the road down which we walk. And step by ugly, hateful step, this truth, this shadow, is lengthening its reality across our heart, across our intellects, across our land.

This is the direct consequence of the abortion position. And this is not the end of it. Infanticide is next. And I want to say pointedly that this kind of thing ought to give pause to all those so-called "pro-life" people who went in to support Christy Whitman. Because by giving legitimacy to her extremism, they have opened the way to this greater extremism. It was no accident that this filth appeared in the New York Times two days before her re-election was on the line.

I'm sort of sitting here, wondering. Because I read this piece through because I think that what Michael Kelly talks about here, and this piece by Steven Pinker in the New York Times, is a watershed in the moral life of America. And the fact that this individual is on the pages of this supposedly reputable newspaper, saying the following--"No, the right to life must come, the moral philosophers say, from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess." Did you get that? Y'all don't understand what's going on here, do you? And the reason I say that you don't understand it is because I am sitting here . . . when I say something and you really get the point of what's going on, you'll immediately call in and you'll comment, because your gut feels it. And this kicked me in the guts.

Do you know why? It kicked me in the guts because right there is the confirmation that the intellectual so-called "elite" in this country has utterly rejected--utterly, totally and completely rejected--or is in the process of rejecting the principle that protects your life and mine from arbitrary abuse by people who happen, for whatever reason, to have power enough to abuse us. Since what is he saying here?: "The right to life must come, the moral philosophers say, from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess." That is a lie. No moral philosophers would say that that is where the right to life comes from. The moral philosophers who articulated the moral foundations of this country didn't say that the right to life comes from "significant traits" that we human beings happen to possess. They said, very simply, that the right to life comes from the Creator, God. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The rights come from God.

Now, you reject that idea--which, of course, the abortion argument does; you reject that idea--which, of course, the evolutionary sort of science does, and moral philosophy; you reject that idea--which evolutionary psychology does--and what happens? Then the right to life comes from "morally significant traits." Now, who determines what's a "morally significant trait"? See? Haven't you figured it out? Once we say that your right to live comes from "morally significant traits," then the whole question becomes, "what's a morally significant trait?" How about I.Q.? Is it I.Q., maybe, a "morally significant trait"? How about skin color; is that a "morally significant trait"?

Do you know, the answer to that question, my friends, is that a "morally significant trait" will be whatever you can persuade enough people is a "morally significant trait." That's it. And if I can talk people into believing that I.Q. is morally significant, then we can kill all people below a certain I.Q. level. And if I can talk people into believing that a certain ability to articulate--it's even said here, you know: later on, you did hear, right, that this person from whom Pinker quotes says that some people would argue that up to the time an organism learned how to use certain expressions, it would be permissible to kill them. That is a way of saying: "If you're not articulate, if you can't speak the language we want you to speak, then we can kill you."

You don't see where this is going? I'll tell you where it's going. It's going into the belly of the beast, that's where it's going. It's going into the heart of Nazi Germany, that's where it's going. It's going into Auschwitz; it's going into the concentration camps of the Nazis, that's where it's going. And it's not going there in Germany; it's not going there in Beijing; it's not going there in the Soviet Union. It's going there in the New York Times; it's going there in YOUR country.

And that means that the challenge that will exist now is not going to be a challenge for somebody else. You are going to have to make up your mind whether you accept this Nazism. You're going to have to make up your mind whether you are going to stand up and give the salute to this drivel, or whether you're finally going to take a stand and do something to oppose the sickness that has been stalking this country ever since Roe vs. Wade. That's what this is about.

Do you think that people are finally going to come to realize this? Do you think they are finally going to see it and start to stand up and realize that this is the most critical issue we face? We are going down the road to that Nazism, in America. And it's right there in the New York Times.

I have told people this for years. And I will, right now, say: "I told you so! I told you so!" And if only we will listen, we may be able yet to avoid the worst. But will anyone listen?

[BREAK]

We are talking about the clear sign that infanticide is being promoted now in America into a position where it will be intellectually respectable, defining a kind of new extreme. The present extreme is Mr. Clinton and Christy Whitman--partial-birth abortion--which, unhappily, has now been legitimized by some pro-life leaders, who went in there supporting Christy Whitman even though she crossed that line into moral extremism. But now Mr. Kelly comes forward, and he talks about Mr. Pinker, an article in the New York Times--not some Podunk newspaper, not some fringe, loony-tunes eugenicist journal: The New York Times--and Mr. Pinker, who is supposedly an established, reputable scientist, with a growing reputation, arguing infanticide is okay.

And so the new extreme will now be that we get to kill our babies! I told you this. For years I have told people: go down this road; remove the protection of principle from human life; and it becomes entirely a matter or arbitrary decision whether it's in the womb, out of the womb, a week out of the womb, five years out of the womb, eighteen years out of the womb, or no relation to the womb, once you have established the criterion that says that human rights--the right to life--must come from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess. And if you are found to be deficient in those traits, I can kill you.

You don't get it yet. You guys don't see what's going on right in front of your eyes. Or you think they'll just come for somebody else, don't you? Those of you who are old enough ought realize that one of the morally significant traits that is already wandering around out there as a potential one is youth. Youth: when you get too old. You haven't figured it yet, have you? This argument over hear, which says it's our decision to make, which says morally significant traits are needed; and that argument over there on euthanasia, which says that when you reach a certain point of pain and age and uselessness, you ought to kill yourself. And when you put the two things together, it becomes "we'll kill you." But the older people in this country don't see what's coming; you just don't see it, do you? Or you don't want to see it. I don't know which. But it's headed towards you like a freight train, and it's going to hit you by the millions, maybe before too long.

Because this kind of argument, in a decent society, should never even appear on the horizon. And I will state unequivocally--I have thought about this in the course of my life; I don't know if any of you have--have you ever thought about what you would have done if you had been a German in Nazi Germany? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about whether you would have showed up at the rallies, and done the screaming and yelling, and been one of Hitler's fans, or whether you would have been in the dangerous level of helping people to try to escape from Nazism; or maybe you would have been among the resistance, the people who actually decided "I have to fight this evil." Where would you be? Where would you have been?

As a nation, we were on the right side in the war against the Nazis and their depthless evil. But now, it is no longer a question of international relations, because this argument--this little Nazi argument--this is right here in America, right now, being made in a supposedly respectable newspaper. I've always told you that the New York Times' real motto is "All the lies we see fit to print," and this kind of filth proves it. Doesn't it? Yes it does

So we sit here looking at this go on, and don't we have to ask ourselves what stand we would take? If it became the law of the land--if the Supreme Court, in its infinite depravity, were to decide that this kind of thing were acceptable--you'd just sit back, wouldn't you? The final step taken, on the road to Nazism, and you would just sit back and take it. "Yes, that's good; let's accept that; let's be quiet about that; don't want to be seen to say anything about that."

At what point does it become unconscionable to simply sit by while evil possesses your land; while it destroys the law; while it claims innocent lives? At what point do you become culpable, when you are no longer able to say, "This isn't my business"?

It IS your business! It's our business, if this stuff goes unopposed! It's our business if it takes over the conscience of America! It's our business if, as abortion has done, it ultimately determines the law--that's our business! Because this is government of the people, by the people, for the people; we sit back and allow the principles of justice to be destroyed, and we the people are responsible.

But there I go again. That's probably just me being angry and mean-spirited, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. I should follow the rest of the talk show hosts in America. I should sit around, and we could talk about things that will make you laugh today. We could talk about things that will focus you on stupid frivolity. And while we sit on the cart carrying us to the charnel house of history, we can laugh it up, have a good time.

I think sometimes we need to put that beside us, and realize where we are headed. And we are on the road to a great self-destruction that is already taking place. And that destruction, which ends up claiming lives in the womb, and children in the hospitals, and young lives in the streets--it starts with the corruption of our heart and of our consciences. It starts with arguments like this, purporting to give intellectual respectability to that which can have no respectability, intellectual or otherwise.

And so what do we say? What do we decide to do? Nothing. We're just gonna sit on our hands. I'm sitting here realizing that y'all won't even pick up the phone and say anything about it; it bothers you so little that you don't even want to talk about it.

You know how I am on this show sometimes. You realize that, don't you? When I see something like this, which I absolutely know . . . I know, that though some people may not realize it, this thing is probably the most important thing that happened in America in the last week, was that respectability was given to this evil principle. The most important thing. And the response--the absolutely necessary response--is that we have to stand up and squash this right out; before it gets anywhere, we must show that it will have no truck in America, it will have no ground given to it in America. And if we give it even a moment's notice of ground, then it's gonna take the place over. And the next century will be a century of such evil I don't even want to contemplate it.

ANNOUNCER: This is the Alan Keyes Radio Show: America's Wake-Up Call.

KEYES: And I'm going to live up to the name of this show today, if it takes all day. Okay? WAKE UP OUT THERE! WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THIS COUNTRY? THIS IS AN ALARM SOUNDING!

Our conscience is being destroyed, systematically, by people who claim to be our intellectual leaders, and betters, and who turn out to be nothing but contemptible little monsters, trying to turn us into their like.

And if I sound angry about this, I am. I am angry and deeply concerned for the future of my country. We will not survive this kind of deep-dyed moral corruption in our intellect. We won't. In our heart, in our moral conscience and principles.

[RESPONSE TO CALLER]

People are coming forward to give intellectual respectability to killing our children--not in some metaphoric sense; not just in the context of the abortion controversy and the murders already taking place in the womb--but now to stand forward and say that we should just be able, new mothers, to kill their children, and we shouldn't treat them badly, we shouldn't make an adverse judgment. This is where it all leads.

And I think you are absolutely right. When are the guys in the churches, and in the pulpits, going to wake up to the fact that their silence about abortion is now leading to the point where these people can come forward and advocate, openly, murder on grounds that eventually will extend to anybody we please?

CALLER: Does it have an end?

KEYES: I think that if we don't start to get back to where we belong, it doesn't have an end. There is no limit to the horrors that we are going to see perpetrated, because we have thrown away our conscientious belief in the one thing that can protect us from this kind of deep-dyed intellectual depravity and corruption--and that is the great principle our founders gave us: we are, all of us, created equal. And we are endowed--not by certain "moral traits," but by God almighty--with our unalienable rights. Throw that idea out the window, and there is no limit to the evil that men do.

[BREAK]

No, this is not another show. I have dispensed, today, with the Frist countdown. We'll resume it. But I've got to tell you, talking--even tongue in cheek--about the countdown to communist domination of the world pales in comparison to what I am talking about today. Why are we sitting here worrying about whether the communists are going to take over the world, or whether thugs in Beijing are going to take over the world, when we are sitting in the midst of a time when we have elites in this country who want to turn us into thugs, who want to make us no better than those we have fought, and fought, and fought, in this century, in order to determine a better destiny for the future of mankind?

So I dispense with the countdown today, because I think we are actually, in truth, in danger of something far more significant than communist domination. Because that becomes absolutely inevitable, maybe even irrelevant, if we have already been dominated in our hearts and conscience by these depraved arguments, by this depraved abandonment of every principle that makes it worth supporting this nation, that makes it the nation we love.

This hasn't just pushed a button, by the way. This isn't about pushing buttons, and getting a little upset. Because, as you know, this isn't just a talk show. This is about the truth. And the truth is that this now appears on the horizon . . . And I want you to think carefully about the timing of this. Mr. Pinker's article, which I know have here in front of me--"Why They Kill Their Newborns: A mother who murders her baby commits an immoral act, but not necessarily a pathological one. Neonaticide may be a product of maternal wiring." This kind of filth appearing in front of us now. When did it appear?

It appeared on the second of November, two days before the election in which Christy Todd Whitman, whose support of partial-birth infanticide defines today, for the moment, the extreme in our politics, was up for re-election. And by proxy, Bill Clinton's continued veto of the partial-birth abortion bill was up for re-election. And in that context, the New York Times Magazine chooses to print this piece, which purports to stand at an even further extreme than Whitman, and present arguments that would make it intellectually respectable to consider infanticide. Do you think that was an accident? Because I don't think it was.

And that's why I said last hour: the "pro-life" individuals, so-called, who went in to support Whitman--they may not have known what they were doing--but I think they become part, in that process, of an effort to deeply corrupt the American conscience. They cooperated, wittingly or unwittingly, in that effort. Because they helped to legitimize the notion that Christy Whitman wasn't the extremist, a notion that is, of course, further buttressed by the appearance of an article like this, talking openly about infanticide.

Do you get it? I hope you get this, because these are the games being played with our hearts and with our heads, to prepare us for things that are not, in any sense whatsoever, games at all. We are playing here with the most awesome kind of fire. And you would think we would know better, because that fire has scorched the earth quite literally in the course of this century. So many people already have died because of this kind of progression toward evil.