Alan Keyes
May 7, 1995

You know, it's always easy, when you come to California, to tell people that it's a pleasure to be here--because it is. This has got to be one of the nicest places in the world. And it always makes me wonder: it must require great character to live here. Because I, myself, I've always said if I lived in California the one problem would be that I'd never get anything done. I mean, the nice days where I come from you have to give in to the temptation to sort of slow down and drink it in. And, of course, if you gave into that temptation here, you'd never speed up again.

But you know, thankfully you all have the character to resist that, and as a result you very often end up being in the vanguard of this country's affairs--for better or worse, I have to tell you. Sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse--we all know this. But by the same token, you also have in this state a microcosm of all the problems that we face in the country as a whole, reproduced in the cities and the countryside, reproduced in the schools and in the families. And it's one of the reasons, I believe, that I have found when I am coming to California these days a great resonance for some of the things that I've been trying to say.

Because, people who feel the weight of this country's situation right now--and by the thousands and millions all over this country, I am convinced now that they do feel its weight--there are many folks who are almost in a state of mourning.

And part of the reason that I am here is because of that. When I first stepped forward with the idea of getting involved in the presidential primary discussion, I'll be quite frank with you, I wasn't at all sure that I was going to throw my hat into the ring. But I did think it was necessary to stand up and start speaking to some issues that were being neglected, or even backed away from, by our Republican leadership. And I got involved to speak to those issues, because I think that it is very critical right now for this and for the party that we maintain the Republican Party's position as the defender and promoter of the basic values and principles of American life.

I actually kind of thought, though, that I'd stand up, I'd speak to those issues a little bit, we'd demonstrate how important they were to people, and then one of the big names and big guys would decide that was the right thing and they'd take the ball and run with it, and that would be that--and then I could go home and mow my lawn, and continue my radio program, and do what we Americans like to do, which is mind our own business.

But, you know, it didn't work out that way. It didn't work out that way, in part because the problem that I think is faced right now in the country and in the Republican Party is deeper than the reluctance of a few individual politicians to face up to the challenges that we really are confronting.

I think the Republican Party is headed for a deep crisis. I think it's headed for a deep crisis because the temptations of power and success are now catching up with the party's principles. And there are some people trying so hard to figure out how we stay on top, that they are forgetting why it is that we want to stay on top. They are trying so hard to figure out how we can keep control of the government, that they have forgotten that our job, as a party, is to take that government, cut it down to size, and give its power back to the people of this country.

And they have also, unhappily, forgotten that on the other side of that equation--if you really care about that agenda, then you realize that reducing government power and reclaiming the people's power isn't really going to do us much good if we, as a people, have allowed ourselves to become so licentious and corrupt that that power will necessarily be abused.

You know, the truth of the matter is that most of us wouldn't want to live in a society with a limited government, if we lived amongst a people that had no control over its passions and vices. Imagine living in a society of gangs and thieves and rapists and murderers--the average urban neighborhood in America. Imagine living in that society in the context of a limited government, where the thieves and rapists and murderers and scoundrels were allowed to do their will upon you and upon others in the society. I bet you'd wake up every morning wishing for a government that was unlimited enough to keep them under control.

You see, limited government becomes a curse if you don't have a people capable of controlling and governing itself. Limited government becomes a curse if you have a people whose passions are so outrageous and out of control that they are able and capable of doing anything to one another for the sake of satisfying those passions.

And that means that, as conservatives, which I strongly am, if we care about the agenda of limited government, if we really want to see it succeed, then we have got to be dedicated also to the agenda of moral renewal, and character renewal, and moral restoration.

And I think that we can see a very clear example of that. I was thinking about this in the context of all the talk about the Oklahoma City bombing. And as a nation, we all felt assaulted by that tragic event. We felt the anger; we felt the grief and pain. And we felt the sense of vulnerability of the people of Oklahoma City--one of the cities of this country we would have thought to be as far away from the depredations of terrorism as you could get. And yet, today, 144 American lives claimed has taught us otherwise.

But there are a lot of people out there now who are telling us that in order to control that kind of threat, we have to give up our liberties. Did you watch those experts on the news programs say to us, "Americans are going to have to get used to enjoying a little less freedom--maybe a lot less freedom--if we want to be secure from these terrorist threats"?

If you think it through, that logic is the logic of licentiousness leading to tyranny. It is the logic of the abuse of freedom leading to the loss of freedom. And it is the logic that some of the people in our society and government would like to foist off on us today as the inevitable future of the American people.

I believe that we have to develop an approach to our lives, to ourselves, to our choices, and to our government, that tells them that they are wrong, that tells them that we mean as a people to stand by the original principles and the original mission of this great republic.

And those are principles that state that we are a people capable of governing ourselves, and they are a mission that states that for all mankind, as our Founders said, we shall vindicate the capacity of human beings to govern themselves. We do not have to give up freedom in order to maintain our security. If we are able to maintain our self-discipline, we will be able to keep this nation whole and safe.

That's why I see an agenda developing now for this nation in the next few years. It's critical for the republic. We have to think through the relationship between our practical problems and our moral disintegration.

I call it a "get a grip" period. Because we all encounter it in our lives, don't we? I'm sure that each and every one of us, at various points in our individual life, has reached on of those moments when it looked like everything was just flying apart; when we weren't quite sure if it was family or job or relationship--things just were getting out of control.

And we had to stop and take stock of our lives and of ourselves, and determine what our priorities were, and where we had gone wrong, and get back to that kind of a relationship with our true principles that would set the matter straight.

Very often, if you're at all like me, that also becomes a crisis of faith. It becomes a time when you have to search for the Source of all authority and all principle, and see if you can get straight with the God that is the Creator of the universe. It's that moment in which you're going to get yourself right with God, and get things right in your life, and put things back together, so you can take steps in the right direction to achieve the goals that you think are right for yourself and your family, or your community.

Well, I tell you, I think that this nation is at a "get a grip" moment right now. For the last thirty and forty years, we have been playing violent and dangerous games with the freedom of this country. We have followed false philosophies that undermined our sense of individual responsibility and denied every single premise of our free way of life. And we are either going to reexamine the wrong turns we took in the road and get back where we belong or, I believe, we are going to go bankrupt, morally and financially. And we will be that generation which represents the end of this great legacy of freedom.

I don't believe that there is any issue that epitomizes this moment more than the issue of abortion. That's why I talk about it all the time--among other reasons. There are some people out there who think that I do that just because I'm obsessed with it, or something like this. And actually, I think that you could be excused for being obsessed with it, don't you?

I think that if you were aware of a situation that was costing millions of innocent lives, in which you were being told that the most helpless and vulnerable part of a nation's population was being cut off, without hearing, without trial, without a chance, don't you think that you might just become obsessed with doing something about it, if you were a decent and right-thinking human being? Don't you think you might just become "obsessed" with making the change that would bring it to an end? I think so.

But I believe also, though, that this is something that runs deeper, maybe, than our moral obsession. Because we are not only taking the life of innocent children; we are assaulting the deep principles that sustain the moral life of this country.

Because the abortion issue . . . people always ask me about this--I get it at dinner, I get it from reporters, I especially get it when I'm talking to people who are pointed out to me as potential donors in the Republican Party. I don't mean to insult anybody here who supports the pro-life cause and is a donor to the Republican Party, but I have to tell you, I have been finding that when I go to the groups of supposedly heavy-hitter donors in the Republican Party and I talk about the pro-life issue, I look around the room, and it looks like sixty or seventy percent of the people are just feeling pained and wishing I would go away.

And this has begun to worry me. Because it looks like the coffers of the party are being fed from sources that contradict what the soul and heart of the party knows to be right. And this is not an academic concern, because I am told that a lot of the big names out there, they go in the back room with the contributors and tell them, "Look, I have this pro-life record, but don't you worry about it--you can give me your money anyway. I won't make a big issue out of it. It won't be front burner. I won't let it interfere with the big tent."

And then what happens? What happens is that Arlen Specter, and Christine Whitman, and your own Governor, Pete Wilson, can stand up and tell us that we should rip the pro-life plank out of the Republican platform, and all those supposedly pro-life Republican leaders stand there in silence, and let them get away with it! That's what happens.

And if we let it go on, we will find that we are a party that has lots of money and no constituents. And frankly, I don't see how you win elections that way. I am told that we tried that in the course of earlier years, and it didn't work out too well.

But then in the course of the 1980's, what did we do? In the course of the 1980's, we started to stand forthrightly against abortion and for the great moral principles that teach us what freedom is really about. And it turned out, contrary to a lot of thinking, that that was not only the right thing to do, it was also the path to political success.

I find it appalling that I still have to get questions from people in the media based on the assumption that if you are pro-life this is some kind of political liability. Where were they in 1994?

I distinctly remember. It hasn't been that long. I know we're supposed to have short memories--they tell us that, right? "Oh, you guys you don't remember anything; six weeks ago, it's gone." I know we're supposed to have short memories, but I still remember the '94 election.

I still remember the fact that in 1994, not one single pro-life congressional incumbent went down to defeat. I remember that! I still remember that in 1994, the pro-abortion types were dropping like ten-pins everywhere you looked. I still remember that! And I still remember, as well, that when we count up the freshman class of the Republican Party that took over the Congress of the United States, over two-thirds of them are counted as strong in the pro-life cause. So don't tell me that standing up to defend the unborn is a political liability.

Now, I'll tell you, from one point of view it might have felt a little better for me in those days when I had to feel like I was really making a political sacrifice to stand up and do what is right, and I could go home at night and feel a little self-righteous about it, and all that. But I have to be honest with you. The political facts have deprived me of this satisfaction.

The truth of the matter is that it is not only right in the moral sense, it makes political sense to stand up and defend what is right in this country today, because a lot of people are concerned that we have gotten off the right track, and need to get back where we belong.

But after you come to that conclusion, you then have to think through, then, where is it that we belong, and why does it have practical consequences. Because, as I say, it's not just the fact that we're snuffing out innocent lives. There's also the fact that we're doing it in a way and on a premise that completely undermines what we have said through the years and decades to be the fundamental premises of our entire way of life.

Now, I find no better statement of those fundamental premises--and I frankly don't think that anybody else does, either--than the great American Declaration of Independence.

I think that Jefferson managed, in his inimitable way, to put into a few lines--actually, it's like a 15-second spot, almost--the statement of this country's entire moral and political foundation: "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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Everything we are is in those words. Those words tell us why we've got to have elections, why we must have a representative government, why we cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process. They tell us why it is that no government, and no power on earth has the right to trample our dignity underfoot without justifying itself before the tribunal of God. Because our rights don't come from governments, and they don't come from constitutions, and they don't come from human powers of any kind! They come from the hand of the Creator, God, and we must answer to Him when we violate them!

But if that's true, if that is in fact our principle, then the logic is clear. We have rights. Those rights come from God. But there is one other step that we often forget. And that step is really . . . I don't know that it's explicitly stated; they didn't state it because they thought that it was so obvious. But, it goes without saying that if you conclude that because your rights come from God, therefore, governments and human powers must respect those rights, that conclusion is based on the implicit, unstated, but absolutely guaranteed premise that we must respect the authority of God.

The Declaration of Independence has been presented as if it is just a declaration of rights, when in point of fact it is also a declaration about the authority that underlies those rights, that transcends our will and our choices and our whim, and must be respected if our freedom is to be sustained. And so, if I come along, and I then tell you that it is OK for you to exercise your freedom in a way that disrespects that authority, I am actually telling you that you can exercise freedom in such a way that you destroy freedom. And we know where that leads, don't we?

And that is the abortion issue. We are looking at people, and we're basically telling them that they have the right to exercise their freedom in a way that tramples on the fundamental premises of all rights.

How can this make sense? "You have the right to do what, if you do it, will destroy all respect for your rights. So go ahead!" What kind of people are going to encourage us to go ahead and exercise our rights in such a way that, if we exercise them in that way, they will then be able to come along and tell us we no longer have any rights? I think that this is clearly a kind of moral trap that will push us over the brink of the abyss, down which lies tyranny and despotism and the loss of our human dignity.

And we can see it again in that image of abortion--because, what are we doing? We are reaching back into the womb to rip out the most innocent and helpless and vulnerable form of life, based on the notion that we get to decide who is human and who is not.

Now, I know, there are people, even within the Republican Party, they're always telling you, "Oh, wait a minute. We can't do anything about this abortion issue. There's no way to resolve it, because it's a question of where you draw the line." Isn't that what they're always saying--"where you draw the line"? "And if you draw it here, then so-and-so is human, and we can disagree about that."

And I'm thinking to myself, if you don't mind my saying so, that this is not exactly an academic question for me. Because I, thankfully, wasn't around in the last time that Americans decided they had the right to draw the line, but I'll tell you something, my ancestors were on the wrong side of it.

And I'm not going to stand by while somebody reasserts that same bad principle, and says that we as human beings have the right to draw the line that determines who is human and who is not! Because I deeply suspect that we got it wrong that time. We're gonna get it wrong every time! You know why? We're gonna get it wrong every time! We're gonna get it wrong every time, because God drew the line, and all we have the right to do is respect His will.

If we're going to go down this road and adopt the principle of abortion, clearly we're knocking our basic principles in their head and throwing them down the toilet of history. And if that's not bad enough, this isn't just an abstract matter of principle. You and I both realize that almost every problem we have in this society can, on the basis of all the studies and surveys I've seen, be traced back to one thing--the breakdown of the marriage-based two parent family.

Upwards of thirty percent of the children born in America today are illegitimate. In the black community, that figure is sixty-five and seventy percent. When we look at the social statistics, seventy percent of the folks who end up in prison come from broken homes. A young woman who comes out of a broken home is three times more likely to end up pregnant in her teenage years than one who comes from a stable, intact family. Children from such families are more likely to be poor, more likely to end up on drugs, more likely to end up as part of the criminal empire, more likely to end up face down dead, bleeding their life into some gutter!

The family crisis isn't a joke. The family crisis is not an abstraction. The family crisis is a tragedy that's claiming lives on the streets of our cities and towns every single hour.

And so, that moral crisis, that family crisis, is feeding all these other crises. We spend thirty-two billion dollars on welfare--why? Because of the family crisis. We spend billions of dollars on prisons and crime and policemen--why? Because of the family crisis. We spend billions of dollars on education systems that no longer work, no longer motivate, no longer produce the kind of results that we need to produce--why? Because of the family crisis.

All these people who are standing in front of you and telling you that they're gonna get the budget right, and they're gonna get the money right, and they're gonna find the spending cuts, and they're gonna get the money straight, are lying through their teeth! We will never get the money right until we get the morals right, and you and I both know it!

But that means that we have to ask ourselves about the moral roots of this family crisis. I think by know that we've begun to realize that it's not because of economics and jobs that families fall apart. As a matter of fact, both in my experience as a black American--and I look back at black American history and I find that no matter what the economic vicissitudes, the black family in America was better off in the past than it is today.

It was better off even under the worst system of economic oppression you can imagine: slavery. During slavery times, historians estimate that fifty to sixty percent of the children were being raised in two-parent households! Today in the black community, it is thirty-six percent. And after the slavery system ended and people put their families back together, all the way up until the 1960's, seventy-five to eighty percent of the children were raised in two-parent households. That, in spite of Jim Crow, and segregation, and economic discrimination, and deprivation, and males that couldn't get work, and jobs that didn't exist, and depressions, and everything else. No economic crisis could devastate the family the way it has been devastated today.

And there are many of you who lived through America's Great Depression, and I bet you could tell me, you could answer for me the question of whether or not that Great Depression destroyed families, or whether it wasn't, in fact, because of the strength of many families that people managed to survive those grueling years.

So I think that all that stuff about how economics is destroying families is a lot of bunk. I think that families are being destroyed by the destruction of the moral foundation of the family life.

And the destruction of that moral foundation is clear. I saw it in a headline the other day. It was in the Washington Post; there was a story that was headlined: "What Are Children For?" And I paused over that headline because . . . I don't know why it was, I just had this feeling in my gut that something was awfully wrong with even asking such a question. It's the sort of question that I realized it would never have occurred to me ask about my own children. What an absurd thought: "What are my children for?" It's a ridiculous question.

Because, of course, the moment I stopped to think about it I said, well, my children aren't for anything; they're just there. For better or worse. They represent a kind of end in themselves. Right? And they must be treated that way. They have to be treated just like they establish their own worth and value just by being there.

And we love them that way, too. Have you ever noticed that? We love children as if it doesn't matter what the outside world says, it doesn't matter what value or lack of value anything in the world impresses on them. We love them just because they are, because they belong to us; because they belong to God. We love them. They have a worth in themselves.

Now the truth of the matter is, as you and I both know, that we are supposed to love all human beings that way. That is the essence of moral respect for human beings. And when our great Declaration of Independence tells us that our rights are from God, what it's really telling us is that each and every human being has that spark of divine right, which each and every one of us is obliged to respect and nurture for its own sake--not for what we get out of them!

And I read through that article, and they were talking about how in the past children helped with the farm chores, and now they don't. And in the past you could raise your children to take manufacturing jobs, and now they're gone. And in the past you could get emotional satisfaction out of seeing your children succeed in the professions, and now you can't. And they quoted from some "British psychologist" to tell us that these days, "all the things that Western civilization values--independence and money and travel and so forth--children interfere with them and nobody cares . . ."

And I'm sitting there thinking to myself: this is not only absurd. It's not only funny. It's deeply immoral to talk about children in this way. It's wrong to talk about your children as if they were instruments that exist for the sake of your pleasure, convenience and satisfaction. It is deeply immoral to take this attitude toward your offspring. It's also, just by-the-by, deeply immoral to take this attitude toward any human being.

But tell me what happens to family life if we start thinking about each other in families that way. We're not going to learn to value each other for your own sake; we won't know the meaning of love. And ultimately, if we're looking for satisfaction, we're always going to be able to find greater satisfaction outside the family. So all the external forces will pull it apart, won't they? And in the end, family will be gone--because the moral foundation of family life, which is that ability to love unconditionally, will have been absolutely destroyed.

And here is where we get to the clincher. Because that notion that your children exist for your convenience, for your pleasure, for your satisfaction, and that if they don't serve that pleasure, satisfaction and convenience, you have the right to get them out of the way--that is the principle of abortion.

And so, we see that at the heart of this issue is an attitude that poisons and destroys the entire possibility of family life. It establishes as the principle of right in this society the notion that other human beings, including those who are closest to us of any human beings in the world, can be regarded by us as objects, dehumanized instruments of our pleasure and passion and convenience. Abortion strikes at the very heart and soul and principle of what it means to be part of a family. And as a result, that issue, and that issue alone epitomizes the cause of our entire moral and social crisis in America.

And so, you see, I don't see how any of us could ignore it. And I think that those politicians who are standing up today and saying, "Well, there are other things we could talk about. We could even talk about other moral issues without talking about the issue of abortion"--you know what that tells me? It tells me that they don't understand the other moral issues any better than they understand this one!

It tells me that it's time that we got ourselves a crop of leaders who are going to recognize the fact that, in principle, you don't get to pick and choose amongst the principles of right that make us a nation. That Declaration of Independence either establishes the identity at a moral level of this people, or it doesn't. And if it does, then it requires of us that we show as much respect for the rights of the helpless unborn human life. It requires of us that we acknowledge our dependence upon the authority of God, and our due fear of His will and His wrath. And if we're unwilling to do it, then what we are saying is that we no longer wish to be free. Because, our freedom depends upon that moral order, and if we let it go, then we let our freedom go with it.

This is where we are today. And I guess I'm out here on these so-called hustings, because I just don't see any way to escape this discussion any more. There are no excuses left. We don't have the Soviets out there bothering us. We don't have the excuse that we have to take care of the rest of the world first. Our problems have now caught up with us to such an extent that we recognize that welfare and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the whole government mess is going to bankrupt us. We have seen the consequences now of thirty and forty years of government trying to step in and do what our disintegrating families ought to be doing--take care of individuals as if there was somebody in this world that loves them.

And I think that it's time that we began to understand that the whole root of our problem at a practical level lies in that moral destruction of the family, and the effort to substitute government for family in our public life--it can't be done.

We can't take care of poverty by marrying women to the government--it's not going to work. We can't take care of poor old people by turning them over to the government and denying their children the precious right to take care of them and respect them in their elderly years, because it's bankrupting us, and it's time we stood up to it.

If we want to survive as a people, then I think we're going to have to find a new way on an old principle. A new way that involves reviving and invigorating the family and the character of the people that goes along with it. A new way that involves reclaiming our power, reclaiming our responsibility, and standing up for what we are supposed to be: that people capable of fulfilling the great promise that our Founders set down at the beginning, a promise that was made not only to us, but to all generations of Americans, and indeed to all generations of humankind.

You know, in the last several weeks, I've become thoroughly convinced. I was always sort of like this, I always felt this, but because of those letters that we got in response the that Dobson radio program--people writing and pouring out their hearts to us about the plight of this country, and how sad and aggrieved they were to see the way it was going--I've become convinced that, in spite of what the media tells us, in spite of what the TV and radio shows try to do, in spite of all the garbage that's pushed out about America, we are still a great and decent people. We are still a people of families striving to maintain themselves, of parents striving to do the right, of business-people striving to create jobs and do what's right by the folks they work with, of workers going to their jobs and trying to do their work with some modicum of self-respect.

And we are still that people--a people ordinary in so many ways, but capable of such extraordinary things that we have been able more than once in this century to lead mankind, itself, out of nightmares of its own creation.

And since we are that extraordinary people, I think it's time we started to lift our sights a little bit, and to recapture that sense of our real mission and destiny as a people. We aren't supposed to be out there just grubbing for money and seeing who can get the fanciest car, and who will live in the nicest house, and all of this other garbage they tell us is the American Dream. The American Dream was not a dream of material success. It was a dream of moral dignity.

It was a dream of a people capable of denying the philosophers through the ages, who said that people themselves were not capable of government and decency. It was a dream of a nation of human beings drawn from all the quarters of the earth, and all the colors of Joseph's coat of many colors, of all the backgrounds of creeds and races, living under a charter of law, and in the fear of God, and capable of sustaining in this land a peace and a prosperity and a cooperation that came from knowing that we, in our will and our responsibility and our decent choices, would shape the destiny of this land, and indeed, of the earth.

I don't believe that we are ready to give up that dream, in order to follow those who tell us that they'll take care of things if we just give the government enough money, enough power, and enough responsibility. It think that it's time that we took back not only our country, but the dreams and the aspirations that made this country great.

I think it's time that we lift up our eyes to that providential destiny that our Founders felt to be the destiny of America, that we shall be a shining example of what human beings can become: when given the choice between what is right and what is wrong, they choose against the odds to live by what is right.

I think we still have it in us to make that choice. And that's why, I guess, that I'm standing up against the odds. 'Cause all those voices and all those weeping hearts of Americans told me something. They told me that we are a people that has not given up on itself, or its heritage. That we do not mean to be the first generation to drop the ball of freedom, and that, in point of fact, we are ready to take another step toward this, our great destiny.

If you believe it, too, then put aside all the thoughts of victory, and winning and losing--because they have no place in this effort. Think only of how we can stand together to do the best we can to make this country whole.

And if you stand strong enough and long enough, it has been proven time and again in our history that that is enough to overcome all the odds, and put this country back where it belongs.

Come then, let us do the work.

Thank you.