Dr. Alan Keyes
Manchester, New Hampshire

Part 1

I'm very pleased to be back in New Hampshire; especially pleased to have a chance to share some thoughts with all of you today. And I am especially glad to be here in the context of talking about a right that is not only much misunderstood and maligned in this country, but, sadly speaking, under assault from an out-of-control judiciary. And in the face of both the incompetence and the lack of courage of many of our political leaders, it is probably the most threatened, and yet one of the most critical, rights that we have -- and that is the right to keep and bear arms.

We are in the midst, as I think many of us realize, of a great crisis in this Republic's life. There are many symptoms of that crisis. One of those symptoms is that, as a people, we are more and more coming to the point where we no longer have the self-confidence, we no longer have the trust and faith in ourselves, to hold on to those things that are essential to our liberty. And that, I think, is where we are when it comes to the question of guns.

Every time you turn, it seems like somebody is trying to take another episode and use it as a justification for saying, "Well, we gotta get rid of all these guns." This was, interestingly enough, the reaction to this terrible, tragic episode in West Paducah, Kentucky recently -- a fourteen year old boy gets together some weapons and goes into shoot at a prayer group. And what's interesting to me is, you have a fourteen year old boy, he goes to a school and he pulls out a weapon and shoots several students who are praying, and the moral of this story in the minds of some folks is that we've got to control the guns. It seems to me that what we see there is an example of several things that would prove 1) we need to get back control of our kids, and 2) we need to get back control of the entertainment media and other media that have begun to foment such anti-religious bigotry that they lead to such acts of violence.

But many people will come forward after an episode like that, and immediately start to talk "gun control, gun control, gun control." Why? Because that is their favored response for violence. The way to deal with violence; the way to deal with crime; the way to deal with the challenge that we face as a people, the consequences of bad behavior -- is to control instruments. To control "things," because "things" are causing the problem. This is madness; but it's a madness that's deeply rooted, I believe, in a certain way of understanding who we are as people, and what we are as human beings.

And that's what I want to talk to you about today. I hope that you don't mind that I'll probably get a little philosophic -- a little more philosophic than might be usually the case in dealing with this issue. But I think we have to understand something. We are not just faced with an agenda that aims to deprive us of the means to defend ourselves. That effort to deprive us of the means to defend ourselves is but one part of a comprehensive agenda to deprive us, not of the right to keep and bear arms, but of all our rights.

And it rests on a certain understanding of human life and human nature. And we can see that reflected in many things. So I want you to consider some things that people don't often put together. And those are, on the one hand, the agenda of gun control, and on the other, the agenda of sex education in our schools.

Whoa, Alan; what have those things got to do with each other? Well, I'll tell you what. What is happening in our schools today, when they approach kids with this sex education agenda? The big theme today, especially under the regime of Mr. Clinton, even extending now, it seems, to the current Miss America, going around and doing what? Basically telling people that "this whole idea that you can control yourself, and so forth, throw that out the window. You need to concentrate on safe sex, here's your condom." Now, given Mr. Clinton's past predilections, I can kind of understand why he would think that that was the only way that one could do much in this area. But if you think about it, what they're standing before our young people to tell them is very simple: "We know you can't control yourselves; therefore this "thing" is going to substitute for self-control. This "thing" will keep you safe. And if you have this "thing," you will no longer have to worry about the fact that you cannot control your passions." That's what they are telling them.

That does not only give them a condom; it gives them a certain view of themselves, a view of themselves that says "you don't have the capacity to restrain your passions; you don't have the capacity to act as responsible people. And since you can't act to control yourselves, we will give you a 'thing' that will safeguard you, keep you from suffering the consequences of your indiscipline." And so we more and more teach our children that they are beings who have no internal mechanism for disciplining their passions, for controlling themselves, so that they do not have to fear the consequences of their actions.

Now, I think that just in formulating it that way you can probably see where I am headed. Once you have convinced people that they can't control their passions, that the only way that they can be safe is if they are given some "thing," or put in some circumstance that makes them safe, that there is no internal basis for their self-control, you will hand them a condom, and tell them that will keep them safe when they are having sex -- that's a lie, of course, but we'll tell them that.

But when you hand them the condom, what will you have to take away? You will have to take away anything that they might use to harm themselves or each other. Because, after all, if you can't control your passions, what happens when you get angry? Jealous? Resentful? When those passions start to smolder, in the face of that view that you are just a helpless victim of your passions, the assumption is that you are going to reach for the nearest thing, and you're going to use it to harm yourself or to harm others.

The view of human nature that tells our young people that they can't control their sexual passion is the same view of human nature that tells us all that we can't control our anger, we can't control our jealousy, we can't control those passions that lead to violence, and therefore we can't be trusted with the guns we need to defend our way of life. These are the SAME agendas.

These are the same agendas.

What we see coming forward, then, is actually an agenda that undermines our liberty by undermining not just our sense that freedom is important; no. It's worse than that. What they are undermining is our sense that we are capable of freedom, that we have the capacity to live as free people.

Because let's be frank about it. Don't kid yourself. If all of you in this room were convinced that freedom meant anarchy, that freedom meant violence, that freedom meant streets running with blood, property that could not be secured, that the consequence of freedom was going to be that we set ourselves against one another with no constraint and no control -- NONE of us would be in favor of such freedom. We would, all of us, be willing to surrender liberty, if it meant we had to live in that kind of hell. And you know it.

So if somebody comes along and convinces us that we are incapable of disciplining and controlling ourselves, that concept, once it is inculcated, becomes the enemy of freedom, because we lose the confidence to claim our rights. We lose the confidence to believe that those rights are compatible with civilization, with decency, with peace, with order, with all the things that, in fact, we value. We do not wish to live in neighborhoods filled with fear; we do not wish to live with schools where our children kill one another. And so if we can be convinced that we are such people that, trusted with our liberties, that will be the consequence, guess what's gonna happen? We will abandon liberty. And this is what's happening.

This, I believe, is what people like Bill Clinton represent. You read between the lines of what he presents to the American people, and what he is basically telling us is "we know that you are people who can't control yourselves, and we're here to help you. We'll help you deal with the consequences of lack of control of sexual passion through AIDS education and condom distribution, and so forth. We'll protect you from the consequences of your irascible natures, your anger, your jealousy, our resentment, because we will take all the dangerous things out of your hands, so that you can't hurt one another. And then we'll set up courts who will come in, and because you can't control your intimate personal relationships, we'll tell you what you should think, and how you should behave."

It goes so far now that, in going through some of our universities -- I understand that they've even done this at places like Dartmouth -- they now have these codes of conduct for students to determine what they shall do on dates. So we're getting to that level of distrust where you can't even ask someone out on a date without having a signed contract to determine what shall be the proper stages of relationship and intimacy. I feel kind of sorry for our youngsters these days -- can't even go out on dates without hiring a lawyer, my gosh. Must get rather crowded.

But see, this is what happens though, when you have convinced people that they don't have the capacity for freedom, that there is no basis for responsibility, that they can't make right choices. When we no longer trust ourselves, we will no longer want our freedom.

(To be continued)

KEYES 2000!!!!!!

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Part 2
Alan Keyes Showroom