Alan Keyes
February 28, 1998
Biloxi, Mississippi

Introduction: It is my pleasure to present one of the most dynamic and exciting speakers in the Republican Party today. Alan Keyes comes to us from two campaigns as the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in the State of Maryland. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard, he served in the Reagan Administration as Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, with the rank of Ambassador, and then as Assistant Secretary of State for the International Organization Affairs section. He brings competence, new ideas, and a commitment to establishing a moral underpinning to our government service. Help welcome to Mississippi, Alan Keyes.

(applause)

Alan Keyes: Thank you, God bless you, praise God. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just in case anyone might neglect to remember this point, Bill Clinton is a liar.

(laughter and applause)

See that? And somebody will say that I'm starting my speech off with a negative remark, I suppose, but I think we have got to be careful today. You know, Sodom and Gomorrah were in the midst of the best times they had ever experienced, if the Bible is any judge, just before it all came to the end we're all aware of. Good material times don't necessarily mean that good times are around the corner.

As a matter of fact, I think that the Good Lord in Heaven sometimes puts us in circumstances where we are feeling our oats and then He sets up a situation to mock us, so that we can see writ large all of the things that are at work in our lives to destroy us. And I believe without a doubt that the Clinton Presidency represents such a mockery of American values, and American decency, and American greatness. And I've got to say, too. It sure is time we started speaking out about that.

Actually, I've got to confess, I think it's long past time. I myself wondered about Bill Clinton when I first discovered that he had pardoned a convicted cocaine drug dealer without any justification. We've never heard an explanation of that, we never shall. Anybody who is that buddy-buddy with a cocaine dealer, is that a qualification for president? We learned about that, by the way, before the 1992 election. A lot of people had to ignore it to put him where he is.

But I shouldn't--and just to prove that I am an equal opportunity employer, I wouldn't want to stand here and tell you that Bill Clinton is the only deceiver we have in this society. Indeed, I think in spite of our willingness at the moment, perhaps, to ignore it more than we ought, they called the 80's quite wrongly the decade of greed. The reason some people called the 80's the decade of greed is because ordinary, decent Americans were able to benefit, finally, from getting back control of some of their own money, and there are people like Bill Clinton who think that if decent people want to control their own wallets, that's greed.

They called the 80's the decade of greed; do you know what the 90's is? It is epitomized by the man we have sitting in the White House--it's the decade of deception, the decade of lies. And I want to be clear--we've got to be clear: Bill Clinton is a liar.

When somebody asks me to prove that, I refer to the State of the Union Address, where he said that we have the smallest government, or something like that, in 35 years. Go down it, and in no category whatsoever is this government smaller than it was 35 years ago. It was just a bold-faced lie. So if anybody asks you to prove that Bill Clinton is a liar, look at the State of the Union Address. Right out there in front of the whole country, he told a lie. Of course his whole demeanor, his whole presence at the State of the Union Address was in fact a lie, knowing what was really going on in the country.

But he's not the only one. I mean no offense to anybody, but I cringe a little bit. I was just telling Senator Ashcroft's wonderful and lovely spouse at the table that I cringe every time somebody says that we've balanced the budget. I cringe. Yesterday I was reading in the Investor's Business Daily, and I wish some of these folks would read this, but they had a nice little piece, more honest than most of our politicians are being these days, pointing out that if you account for the money they're taking out of the Social Security Trust Fund, we actually have a 95 billion dollar deficit, somewhere thereabouts.

Now, my friends, I don't know about you, but if I'm making ends meet by borrowing money, that's usually not called balancing the budget. (applause) And I find it incredible. I don't care who it is, I don't care which party they belong to. They're standing in front of us today arguing about whether they'll spend the surplus on Social Security or spend it on something else. If they borrowed all this money from the Social Security Trust Fund, what they're really arguing about is whether they're going to pay it back. Does this strike you as an honorable argument? Because it strikes me as a sham no matter who does it. (applause, cheering)

We would do real well for a lot more truth in this country than we're getting, from many quarters. And I say that advisedly, because I have to tell you, I'm on the air every day now, doing my little radio talk show. And people call in from all over the country, as all the events pass. And I know there are people in this room probably, there are folks walking around in Washington right now, who think that the Republican Party is going to do real well come this fall. There are some folks who are hanging back from their criticism because they think that incumbents are going to ride his coattails to impressive victories in the Congress. I've got to tell you--I don't think so. I think if we don't wake up real soon we're going to get a real cold shower come election day in November. (applause)

I am hearing all around the country from a lot of unhappy people. Unhappy because we bought a phony balanced-budget deal from Bill Clinton that actually expanded this government more than it has been expanded in the last few years, and that from a Republican Congress. (applause, whistling, cheering)

They're tired of the lies--tired because we have allowed this man to stand before this country and in his obscene advocacy of abortion, and abortion rights, and partial birth abortion go practically unanswered by those who ought to be standing up every hour of every day to call this nation back to decency. (applause, cheering, whistling)

Tired, and angry, and frustrated because for the last days and the last weeks and the last months we have watched this country's name dragged through the muck of shame before the world. He has not just turned us into a joke, he has turned us into a dirty joke. But I'll tell you what's worse than that: we should have expected this. Look at this man, look at his background. Look at what the press and everybody else was willing to ignore. How can we be surprised? We should not be. If you elect a man without character you will get problems that reflect that lack of character. (applause)

Do you know what surprises me, though? No, and some of you won't like what I'm about to say. But I'm going to have to say it anyway. (applause, cheering) In 1994, I, along with many other Americans, went to the polls to elect a Republican Congress and Republican leadership, and for the first time in 40 years, BY GOD we did it. And then we were expecting that that party was going to stand AGAINST Clinton's socialism, against Clinton's immorality. I did not expect the day to come when I would watch a Republican Congress join in 106 standing ovations for the worst President we've ever had in the history of this nation. (Wild applause, cheering, shouts, whistling) They think we didn't see it.

And I didn't elect them, either, to sit on the sidelines now while this country is mislead by everyone under the sun into believing that the spectacle of lying, and indecency, and cover-up, and immorality that we're seeing in Washington has no bearing on the job of President. It is the first time I've ever heard the notion that the President of the United States involves a job that needs no character.

Let's just take a simple example. Over here in our military today, we have former Sgt. Major of the Army, McKinney. I, of course, am not going to prejudge whether he is guilty or innocent; I don't know. I do know this though. Some allegations were made against him with respect to sexual misconduct. When you go down the list of the allegations against Sgt. McKinney, guess what they remind you of? (Shouts of "Bill Clinton" from audience) They remind you of the allegations against Bill Clinton, that's what they remind you of, chapter and verse. Forcing unwanted sexual attentions, fraternizing, doing this and that.

Now tell me something. Here is Sgt. Major McKinney, as I understand a man with a distinguished career, and with lots of medals on his chest. He not only served this country well, as I understand it, he went out and fought, risked his life, spilled his blood for America, and all throughout his career they were saying that he had done a good job. I didn't notice that that good job, when these allegations were raised, kept him from being removed from his office as Sgt. Major, even before he has been convicted. (applause) I didn't see that the good job that he has done has kept him from being tried for those charges. I didn't hear anybody say that his good job excused indecency that would threaten the decency, the morale, the discipline, the integrity of our military.

And he's not the only one. In the course of the last several years we've seen scores--no, we've seen hundreds of people in our military--subjected to the same process. We told them that these were serious matters--and if they are serious matters for the admirals, and serious matters for the generals, and serious matters for the colonels, and the sergeants, and the privates in the army, then they are serious matters when they are alleged of our Commander in Chief. (applause, shouts, cheers, whistling)

And I'll say for sure (applause, shouts continuing) it pains me to have to say that (some laughter). No, no, no, it does. I really wasn't joking; it really does. The last couple of weeks have been very difficult for me, because I live on my faith in the American people. I live on my sense that, no matter what it may look like--this country has a history that suggests that we haven't been any better, sometimes we've been a little worse than some other people in the world--but there has always been this kernel of decency, and when the right chord was struck, it awakened.

And great evils that elsewhere in the world still persist were wiped out by that seed, by the courage, by the conscience of this great people, willing in the last century to go out onto battlefields that were turned into marshes of blood in order to decide questions of justice and injustice. We are a serious people, and whenever the test has been put before us, in the end we have decided rightly. We never, ever said it didn't matter. Do you know why? Because somewhere in our heart of hearts we know that we are not made one by the great wealth of this country, and we are not made one by its great power, and we are not made one by all the successes that we have enjoyed down through the decades. We are not made one by the wars that we have won or lost. We are not made one by the admiration for our technology. (applause starting)

We are made one in our allegiance to the great moral principles of justice, and right and wrong that have from the beginning defined this nation's heart and brought this nation liberty. That is what makes us one nation, one people. (applause)

And if we stand today with a President sitting in the Oval Office who is murdering the conscience of America by telling us that these things no longer matter, we cannot be silent. We must explain to the people of this nation what is at stake. And if we do not, for any reason, then I think that any poll, any consultant, any calculation that keeps us from speaking the truth to our people has kept us from providing them with the only kind of leadership that is worthwhile. And right now, my friends, I am not saying that as an academic point. I say it as an indictment of a silent Republican leadership that had better speak up soon. (applause, shouts, cheers, whistling)

But you know, we also have a great and serious challenge overall in this country, which is only represented in the crisis of the White House today. It is a crisis that represents an assault on the fundamental moral foundations of our nation--the notion that we are a country about success without decency, success without character, success without moral principle--threatens what may in fact may be the most important truth about our nation's life, but it is not the only thing.

In the course of the last--well, actually in the course of this entire century, we've seen the steady march of developments that are, I think, already so far advanced that if we do not reverse them in this generation, we shall no longer be a Republic, we shall no longer be free. And I think we're living in a dream world right now. I want to prove to you, chapter and verse, that we are not a free people right this minute. We walk around with the delusion that we've got freedom and we've got liberty and so forth and so on. And yet we have nothing of the kind. We go through the little charade of our elections and so forth and so on, but fundamental decisions already taken in this century have fastened on our wrists, and on our ankles, and on our necks, the chains of bondage. I do not look today at an audience of free men and women, I look at an audience who are right now willing bond slaves of the government, and you don't even know it. (applause)

You know when that happened? It didn't happen when they raised the tax rate. It didn't happen when they put on this or that surtax. It didn't happen when they taxed capital gains. It happened at the beginning of this century, when against the great wisdom of our Founders, against the clear terms of our original Constitution, they imposed on us an income tax that is incompatible with liberty. (applause, shouts, cheering, whistling)

And I raise now this clear cry. I know that there are a lot of folks, Steve Forbes and other advocates of perpetuating the income tax, and I know, they're pretending other things now. They've come forward with all kinds of wonderful slogans. "Flat tax." "Abolish the IRS." "Abolish the tax code." Come on, y'all. Let's think this through. What is the IRS? It is an agency that exists in order to collect the income tax. Now if we keep the income tax, we could abolish the IRS, but if we still have it in any form, they're going to need an agency to collect it. They may call it whatever they want, but guess what it will still be? As long as you have the tax, you will have the IRS. Don't let them fool you. The slogan "Abolish the IRS" is a deceptive sham. We need to abolish the income tax! (applause, cheering)

They will come before you and they will say, "Let's abolish the tax code." Who are we kidding? What is the tax code? It's just the terms on which they impose this tax. Now if they're going to put the tax on us, and we're going to pay it, they're going to have to have a law that puts the tax on us. What will we call that? Last time I looked, a tax law that imposes a tax is a tax code. So they can abolish all they want the tax code; as long as we have the tax, we'll have the code. We do not need to abolish the tax code, we need to abolish the income tax! (applause) And I'll say it again. Steve Forbes comes forward about it, and he says he wants the flat tax. That's a deceptive way of putting it. What he wants is a flat income tax. See, he still wants the income tax. And income tax by any name is still a tax.

They've put the chains on us at the beginning of the century. And guess what we're supposed to be content to do now? We're supposed to be content to feel grateful when somebody comes along and says, "Let me lighten your chains a little bit. Here I'll make them a little lighter. How about that chain around your ankle, l'll lighten it up a little bit. Maybe I'll entirely remove for a brief period the chain around your neck. The one on your wrists and ankles has to stay though." See?

Now you can tell from my background that I come from a heritage that is liable to see through those remarks. (laughter and applause) They may come to us, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, and offer to lighten our load, offer to let us keep a little bit more of our own money. You go out and earn it! As Lincoln said, you know, we have the right to eat the bread that is earned in the sweat of our brows, except when the politicians and bureaucrats lay preemptive claim to some percentage of it before we even have to say a word. We are not free people, and we are content to argue about whether the chains are here or there, light or heavy, whether he's wearing heavier chains than I'm wearing.

It's time we stopped arguing about whether the chains are light or heavy, or even with Steve Forbes it's time we stopped arguing about whether the chains are equal for all. We must strike off the chains of our economic bondage--WE MUST ABOLISH THE INCOME TAX! (applause, applause, applause, cheering)

And tell me, some of you all (more applause, cheering) . . . see, some of you all, wait, wait, wait. Look over the audience. All of you all who don't think that's worth standing up for, it is because you believe it's not possible. You have been brainwashed into thinking that this tax was somehow imposed by God. We got through more than a century and a half of this nation's history without this abomination! We did!

And I'll tell you something. Does anybody remember, when they put the income tax in back in the early part of the century, 1916 or whatever it was, does anybody remember what embarrassing little feature they were trying to deal with? The original one that finally started the whole process was in a tariff bill, as I recall. A bill to cut tariffs, which has since then become a very popular past time. But you know what little embarrassment they were dealing with at the time? Does anybody remember? I'll tell you what, it had been this embarrassment because they had had to argue about it and thought maybe it was harming the economy, and didn't know what to do with it.

(semi-whispered) It's called a surplus.

See, the government had this embarrassing surplus. That's what it was. They were arguing. The farm interests were arguing with other interests about cutting the tariffs because they still were heavily dependent on imports and thought that things would be better if we had the lower tariff, and so in order to pay for this process they said, "Let's put in a little income tax." It was a major change in our lives.

So when people tell me that it can't work, would one of them please explain to me why if it worked so badly, the embarrassment they had then was a surplus, while the embarrassment we have to lie about now is a deficit? It strikes me like somebody may have had the better formula back then. It strikes me that we abandoned the right approach, which the Founders said was compatible with freedom.

You think you're free? Where's your privacy? There was a time when people understood, you go out, you work, and you eat the bread earned in the sweat of your brow. You make a deal with so and so to go to work for him--and whose business is that? The business of the people who make the deal. "I'll work so many hours for you, you pay me so much, I'll take it home, use it for my family, for my children. Nobody else has the right to know it or say a word about it."

Today we sit down like sheep and give them detailed information about some of the most important, private facts in our lives and we call ourselves free. The income tax has destroyed our privacy, along with our economic liberty. (applause)

It has even managed to corrupt our charitable impulse. I was reading the scripture the other day, the Lord makes it very clear that when you do charity you're supposed to do it for the sake of God, for the sake of love. Somebody comes along and gives you a tax break, and it corrupts your whole mind. You start doing charity for the sake of lucre, for the sake of mammon. When are folks going to realize that it has insidiously infected even our moral judgment, turning us into simpering, money-grubbers when in fact we are a noble people, willing to share the fruits of our labors when we are free to do so? But it's time we told them what our Founders said in the beginning. What we give freely of our hearts, we will give. We are tired of being coerced into giving. It must end. (applause)

And so I say now, we need to take this slogan out into every part of this country. We need to finally wake up and begin thinking about the real alternative--not less taxes, and bigger tax rates, and less tax rates, and flatter taxes. What we need to be talking about clearly is whether we're going to live with this bondage or end it. If we care about our children, then it's time to relieve them of what was inflicted on us at the beginning of this century. You know the greatest gift we could give to the 21st century is to free the free children of this nation from the shackles of the income tax.

So I say take away. If you remember nothing else out of this talk, remember this: if we want to be free again, we must abolish the income tax.

And then you're going to ask me, what shall we replace it with? Well, what did we have in the beginning? You need to go back and read our history. The original Constitution funded the federal government from tariffs, duties, and excise tax. Excises taxes are sales taxes. We can argue about how we imply it, national sales tax, what the rate will be and so forth and so on. This is all after we've made the fundamental decision that we're going to be free again.

The wonderful thing, by the way, and I know that a lot of the free-traders and internationalists are going to smack me up when I say this--I realized the other day the wonderful thing about tariffs. They always think about them as if tariffs have something to do with just some international economic theory. That's not right. We have in America today what is the equivalent for the entire world of a huge shopping mall. All the producers and merchants on the face of the earth come into our shopping mall, and we're very good consumers, you all know this. We buy a lot and we create a lot of jobs in other countries with what we buy and so forth and so on. Why is our shopping mall so good? We're a productive people, yes. It's also cause we have a stable government. It's because we have pretty decent law enforcement, in spite of our efforts, complaints and need to improve it. It's because we happen to be one of the most stable, one of the most prosperous, one of the most reliable markets in the world.

It costs money to maintain that market. Is anybody here a merchant who has to set up in a shopping mall? Do they let you in there for free or do you pay rent? I think you have to pay rent. Sometimes if it's a really successful mall you have to pay a lot of rent. Why is it that we're being led down a path where all the foreign producers and merchants in the world can come into OUR malls, and we're going to do them the favor of letting stay there rent free? I think it's wrong, and I think we're going to wake up soon and realize we might have had a surplus in the old days of the tariffs because when you make judicious use of that approach to taxation, the American people aren't the only people who have to pay to maintain this mall. All the world's people benefit from it, and I think all the world's people ought to pay a share in the cost of it too! (applause, cheers)

One last thought. I know we could be the party of all kinds of things, but I think if you go back to our beginning, Lincoln probably said it best when he said that the great challenge before them then was whether this nation, or any nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, could long endure--whether OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people, would perish from the earth. What Lincoln understood, and that we today forget, is that for all we have many good things we need to achieve, we want a prosperous economy. We want everybody to have a decent share in that prosperity. Those folks who get up and pretend that the government is going to do this for us are lying, and we know it, and it's time we stopped listening to it. It's just a part of the march of socialism.

But is that what America is about? Because actually I remember that in Mussolini's Italy they used to write glowing articles about how he created jobs for Italians. Of course, they gave up their freedom, they had to tolerate all kinds of abuses and deception, but they didn't care. See, they didn't mind if he was immoral, if he trampled on people's rights, if he surrounded himself with all kinds of perverts and depraved people, because "he was getting the job done; he made the trains run on time." Have you heard that lately?

See, that is what makes me ask whether we are still a free people, because that kind of talk is the talk of slaves. That kind of talk is the talk of people who have lost respect for themselves and their liberty. This nation was not founded to be about whether our masters are good to us or bad to us. As Frederick Douglass said, "The question isn't whether I have a good master or a bad master. It is TO BE MY OWN MASTER," and that is the promise of this nation's life. This is a nation about liberty, and from the beginning that liberty was defined not as government, good government, this government or that government; it was defined as self-government--the right and ability to stand forward and shape and control and decide the destinies of their own families, their own communities, and of their nation.

We are forgetting the roots of that though. Three C's you need if you want to control your nation's destiny. The three C's I call them, like the three C's in the army: command, control, communication. There are three C's in self-government. Control of our money. That's why we need to abolish the income tax. Control of our communities. That's why we need to reclaim by whatever appropriate means, the power to allow PARENTS to decide what goes on in the schools in their communities. (applause) That's why we need to reclaim the power to let communities decide how policing will be done on their streets. We need to reclaim the control of our communities, in every area of our lives.

But there's a final ingredient that we really need. Control of your money, control of your community, but finally that one ingredient without which none of the rest of it will ever work, without which we forge ourselves the chains of our enslavement. To control ourselves.

What's the key to that? You know what the key to that is? I think it's very simple. I'm not supposed to say it, they tell me, because I'm standing on a public platform, and we know about the separation of stuff. But I've got to tell you, the Founders of this country knew one simple truth, and they put it right there in the Declaration, right at the beginning. Our rights do not come from the Constitution or the President, no. If we want to be a free people, and keep and sustain those rights, we had better remember, we had better teach our children to remember, in the homes and in the classrooms and in the July 4th speeches and in the Congress and everywhere else, that our rights come from Almighty God, and if we lose our respect for Him, we will lose those rights! (long applause, cheers)

That puts at the top of our agenda the issues that are most at stake in that self-control. Right now I have to tell you the most immediate and pressing issue is to clean up this stinking mess in the White House. You can't put it off for another few months. You can't put it off for a couple of years. It is destroying America's heart and conscience; we must deal with it expeditiously. We must find the truth, close the investigation, decide or not about impeachment and take the stand we have to take to get this nation back to decency! (applause, cheers, hollering, whistling)

But the true long-term priority is that we have got to establish our allegiance to the fundamental truth. If the rights come from God, we don't have the right at an individual level to act like they don't exist. We don't have that right with respect to people because of their race, or because of their creed, and we don't have that right because they are in the womb and we are walking the streets!

This issue is not one issue for some special interest group. If we do not champion the pro-life cause . . . And i don't just mean here, by the way, partial-birth abortion. It's a bad thing. I'm glad that even some of the most conscience-hardened, liberal, pro-abortion advocates in America finally had their guts revolted by the reality of infanticide that is partial-birth abortion, but I'll tell you, the fact that somebody recoils from the worst evidence of their abuse doesn't mean that they have abandoned the abuse. It is not enough to be against partial-birth abortions! You must be for restoring the principle that all human beings in this country are created equal from the moment of their conception to the moment of their natural death. AND THAT IS WHY THEY DESERVE RESPECT FOR THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS! (applause, cheering, whistling, shouts)

That will be for this nation, if we turned around, that will be a great beginning. We're going to have to revive our moral decency to get that done. We're going to have to become again a people of conviction, not calculation, to get that done. We're going to have to return to the deep, sweet author of truth that nourished this nation's beginnings, that nourished its growth through the great frontier, that nourished its courage in the great World Wars.

I think we are faced with a harder task than all of that. For you see, the most dangerous moment in this republic's life, as Lincoln knew, was not to come from external war or great material crisis. It would be a crisis of our heart, when we abandoned the simple fact that we must have respect for the laws of God and the will of God that granted our rights and our religious freedoms. That is our test now. And though we do not see the bodies fall on battlefields, though we do not wade through the marshes of blood, yet this battle is deciding the future of our land, deciding the fate of our children.

And don't fool yourselves, this republic will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. It will be the whimper maybe of your grandchildren when they turn to your children and say, "What was it like to be free?" If we don't act soon, they may not remember. Freedom is one of those things, you know, that once you lose it, you forget what it was like. All the great philosophers agreed. We have a chance now. We can be the bridge between a past of great principles and a future of great promise. But let's not whistle past the graves. That crisis is not decided yet. We are not doing well. We are on the verge of self-destruction.

And do you know who is going to help us get out of it or push us deeper in? You are. For the party you represent is like the thin red line that they used to talk about in Great Britain: we are now the thin line that separates this nation from moral self-destruction. The Democrats abandoned it long ago, the great principles of our time. Surrender to relativism. Surrender to all of the licentiousness and permissiveness and indecency that destroys us.

We have stood firm. We slogged in the vineyards when people told us it was hopeless. We ran candidates when they said no one would listen. We resisted the temptation to be the better Santa Claus, and instead offered people the only truth, which is the hope based upon a clear commitment to our nation's principles, to the courage, the character, the decency to sustain those principles, not just in our laws, but in our hearts.

As Republicans, I think we want something greater than victory. Because I'll tell you something, I was real glad when the Republicans won in 1994. But it wasn't just because they got the power. It was because I believed in my heart that they would use it, without fail, for this nation's good. Let's go forward to win that kind of victory. A victory that counts, because it will keep our children and our grandchildren sure in the knowledge of what freedom is. A victory that counts, not because it brings more money to our wallets and a smile to our happy face, but because it brings a smile to the face of our God. Thank you very much. (applause, cheering, more applause)