Dr. Alan Keyes
Marysville, CA
Part 1

Praise God. Thank you. Praise God. Thank you, very much.

Thank you very much.

Well, I have to say, it wasn't such a bad trip in. I mean, the plane went up and it came down; that's always good. And in the place expected -- just a little later than expected, which, these days, you should be grateful for. I spend a lot of time flying around the country, so I have learned to lower my expectations. It makes life much easier.

The wonderful thing, though, is that once I get here, I can then raise my expectations again. Because I know that I am going to be among friends, and I'm going to be among people who wouldn't be here if you hadn't gathered to do that which it is most important that we do these days, in America. See, that's one of the reasons that I like coming to speak to dinners that are focused on the work of a crisis pregnancy center. Because in the midst of all the other things we do, particularly, these days, fighting the battle in the pro-life movement, you can very often get to the point where you accentuate the negative. After all, we are dealing with something that is very, very negative. And in the course of the next few minutes, I will sadly have to share some of that negativity with you.

But the wonderful thing is that in coming together tonight, we are not here to fight against a wicked thing -- though, [un]happily, we end up doing that. We are actually here to celebrate a very good thing. And what we celebrate is not only the life that you and I enjoy. We celebrate something that may be even more awesome than life itself, and that is the fact that the Creator God has given us the privilege of participating in His recreation of life. Isn't that wonderful?

I mean, think about it; He didn't have to do that! He could very well have kept all the glory and joy and pleasure to Himself. But instead He chose to share it with us; instead He chose to allow us, as human beings, to participate in the wonderful miracle of His creation, and to take just a little bit of credit for it ourselves. And take just a little bit of responsibility for it; particularly as we watch, if we are parents, the lives of our children develop. And somewhere in our heart of hearts, we can't but take a little joy in it, you know. Depending on how old they are, it becomes more or less, of course. (Laughter) My children are entering adolescence; I understand that I'm going to experience the "less" now. (Laughter) But I thank God I haven't started on that journey quite yet, even though it does have its ups and downs.

So, it's wonderful to be here. And it's wonderful to know -- in fact, I would have to say, it's one of those things . . . I was going to say one of the few things . . . that gives me a certain amount of confidence about the nation's future: that you are here. And that we still have, all over America -- and I can report to you that it is not only here, but in cities all over this country -- there are folks who are coming forward, from the depths of their hearts and decency and love, to affirm the truth that we must respect God's gift of life, and not destroy it. To affirm the truth that the responsibility for that respect begins with each of us. It doesn't begin in some abstract principle or document, in some law, in some legislature: it begins, rather, in what we are willing to stand for with our families, with our children, with our neighbors -- how much we are willing to do, how we are willing to reach out.

And it is a critical time. I want to share with you, for the next few minutes, something that today occurred that makes me realize it is even more critical than ever. I have a piece of paper here -- I usually don't carry that up to a podium. But I wanted to make sure that I read this directly, because otherwise you won't believe me.

I host a talk show every day. And my wife approached me last night, when I got home, and she asked me whether I had read an article in the Washington Post by a fellow named Michael Kelly, that had appeared yesterday. And somehow or other, in spite of the fact that I go through all these newspapers, and pride myself on looking at everything, I had missed this. It's kind of like, where you put the sugar, and where the suit was yesterday, and so forth; I'd missed that too. That's why we get married, I suppose, so that we can find our way around. Because there are so many things in the house -- I'd never find them if my wife wasn't there.

Well, in this particular case there was an article in the newspaper I probably would never have found if she hadn't pointed it out to me. Once she pointed it out, though, I realized that I was looking at something that represented, sadly, in a negative way, a watershed for this country. And that might, very well, mark the beginning of a new, a desperate, a hopefully final phase in the struggle for this nation's soul. It was an article by Michael Kelly called "Arguing for Infanticide." Thankfully, he doesn't.

But he was alluding to this little piece that I have here -- this little screed -- hmmmm -- by a gentleman named Steven Pinker, which appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this past Sunday. Now, that is very significant. If it had been some obscure little journal, then maybe I wouldn't make much of it. But that it is a piece by a scientist who is increasingly reputable -- author of a book called "How the Mind Works." Now, after reading the article, I'm not sure I'd trust a book by this man on how the mind works, since his obviously doesn't work too well.

I want to read you two paragraphs from this article, which are startlingly relevant to what brings us together here tonight. And which I hope, by the time we are done talking about it, will impress you with the fact that, although you think you came to dinner, and you think you came to support a local crisis pregnancy center, and you think you came to do a little something for your community, in fact you gather here on the plains of our Armageddon, in the battle that will determine, once and for all, the fate of your country. And quiet as it may seem, and ordinary as this setting may be, that decisive struggle is underway, and you sit right now, this evening, on its front lines.

Mr. Pinker was talking about the right to life, in the context of discussing what he calls "neonaticide." You don't recognize that word, I guess; neither did I. He made it up, I think. Neonaticide is the killing of neonates. What is a neonate, you say? Well, "neonate" is the word that this gentleman will introduce into our vocabulary -- you will sadly, probably, hear more of it -- in order to dehumanize infant life. "Fetus" was the word they word they used to dehumanize life in the womb. Now he introduces a term aimed at dehumanizing life outside of the womb. "Neonate" And when you kill the life outside of the womb, you're not killing a baby anymore! Your killing a neonate. And you are not committing murder! You are committing neonaticide.

And this is a serious scientist; this is not some fringe kook. And this did not appear in some far-out place; it appeared in the Sunday magazine of that newspaper which, in spite of all its lies, purports to be the voice of America's intellectual establishment. And this is what he wrote:

"No, the right to life must, 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.

"Several moral philosophers have concluded that neonates are not persons, and thus neonaticide should not be classified as murder. Michael Tooley has gone so far as to say that neonaticide ought to be permitted during an interval after birth. Most philosophers (to say nothing of nonphilosophers) recoil from that last step, but the very fact that there can be a debate about the personhood of neonates, but no debate about the personhood of older children, makes it clearer why we feel more sympathy for an Amy Grossberg than for a Susan Smith.

"So, how do you provide grounds for outlawing neonaticide? The facts don't make it easy."

I hope you all appreciate what you just heard. Because I believe, in a moral intellectual sense, what you just heard is the beginning of the end of American life. Finally the other shoe has dropped. Finally that which for several decades now, those of us who have committed ourselves to the cause of defending human life, and opposing the doctrine of abortion -- it is now out, it is now clear, what is at stake. And what is at stake is what we have said all along is at stake. They told us, when we told them that this would happen, that we were alarmists, that there was no need to assume that simply because we withdrew protection from life in the womb, that this would take us down the slippery slope to the destruction of life outside the womb. And we told them that you cannot destroy respect for life in principle, and expect to sustain that respect in fact.

And my friends, the evidence has mounted in practice that we were absolutely right. The rising crime and violence in the streets; the children killing children; the mothers destroying their babies. But now something, I believe, even worse in fact than the acts themselves. For the acts themselves are terrible -- they are tragedies; they are things that can be motivated by impulse or passion -- this is the cold-blooded preparation of the American conscience for the mass murder of human beings. Not only in the womb, as we have been murdering them for twenty and twenty-five years; but in every walk of life, and every stage of life, this prepares us for life's destruction. And if you can see in this some difference between what this person contemplates, and what the Nazis did, then you have better eyes than I.

We stand on the verge, you know, of seeing an America in only a slightly different guise, from what the Germans of the twenties stood on the verge of seeing in their country. I say it in all seriousness. We must realize that what will occur in this land, once we have so destroyed our conscience with this lie, what will occur here will make Nazi Germany look like a dress rehearsal.

I do not say this rhetorically. I do not say this as part of a speech. This is going to happen to us. This will be the fate of your children: to live in a nation of which we can no longer be proud, to live in a country we can no longer love, to live in a time when they will have to decide whether or not they shall continue peacefully to acquiesce in the destruction of all rights, or do what some Germans ought to have done -- resist, once and for all. We stand on the verge of an awesome time of trial for this land.

And this is the sign.

Part 2

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