Dr. Alan Keyes
Manchester, New Hampshire

Part 2

And I think that that is behind the whole agenda. I call it the agenda of demoralization. It's literally the case; we are being demoralized. Demoralized in the sense that that understanding of ourselves as moral beings which is necessary for us to be confident in our claim and assertion of freedom is being destroyed. That sense of ourselves as people capable of doing what is right, what is just, what is decent, when the crunch comes, is being undermined. And in the service of that view, they come along then and they say, "but don't worry, the government will take care of you. The government will protect you. The government will guarantee that, in spite of your inability to do for yourselves, everything will go all right."

And that extends to every area, too. Because, you know, it turns out, my friends -- and we actually saw this recently when Bill Clinton went to Virginia -- if you can't be trusted with your guns, guess what else you can't be trusted with? Your MONEY! How can you possibly let people have such a potent power as money, to decide that they shall do what they want with it? If you let that happen, what's going to be the case? These people will be nasty and selfish; they won't take care of the poor; they won't take care of the streets; they won't take care of the schools. That's the implication.

When Bill Clinton went down to Virginia and opposed Mr. Gilmore's pledge of getting rid of a form of taxation in that state, what did he tell people? He said that "these are selfish people, who want to control their own money." The idea being that we have such bad character that, left to ourselves, we will never use our money to take care of one another.

The sad truth is, of course, that in the context of the true America, that's the biggest lie of all. The beautiful thing about this nation's history is that, when you look at the actual record in dealing with poverty and such difficulties, we did a better job before the government came into help than they have ever done since then!

But this approach is rooted in the same debased understanding of our human nature. "You don't have the capacity to control our passions, therefore here's your condom. You don't have the capacity to control your anger, therefore we must take your guns. You don't have the capacity to understand and meet your responsibilities of charity and love toward one another, therefore we must provide the welfare, and we must provide the aid, and we must provide even, in the end, the guidance for your children. You can't even be trusted with that."

And don't tell me it isn't happening. Bill Clinton went to a conference, just recently -- "hate crimes" conference, they called it -- and what did he say? He said we must encourage what they call "diversity education," to teach our children the proper attitude toward different races, and disabilities, and homosexuals, because parents cannot be trusted to teach their children what they need to know. That's what he said. The same agenda at work -- the people are not capable of caring for themselves. And where does it extend? Right into the very family itself! He is telling us that we are incapable of loving and raising our children; the government will do a better job.

And most importantly of all, on this agenda, he is telling us that we are incapable of understanding what moral principles should guide the consciences of our children. We are incapable of understanding what ought to be those moral judgments that guide us in raising them up to distinguish between right conduct and wrong conduct, between liberty and licentiousness. The same concept at work, a concept that is based, ultimately, upon fear and distrust of the people, and that would invite us to put our confidence, instead, in the benevolent attentions of the government.

Now, I have to tell you, my friends -- you look at our history, though, and this ought to give you great concern. Because here you have the wisdom of the Clinton/Gore-style people -- trust the government; don't trust yourselves. What was the wisdom of our Founders? I think it was just the other way. Trust YOURSELVES! Don't EVER trust your government!

That latter is the beginning of wisdom, where political freedom is concerned. But to really understand what that implies, we have got to realize -- "trust yourselves": what does that mean? It doesn't mean put blind faith in yourselves. It doesn't mean trust yourselves under any circumstances, in all conditions, no matter what kind of people you are. It doesn't mean that. It means BE such people as can trust themselves. Be such CHARACTERS as can be trusted with liberty.

And that's why we've got to realize . . . One of the things that is going on in this country that really disturbs me: you've got people who believe in economic freedom, and other people who believe in Second Amendment rights, and other people who believe in moral responsibility. And they are trying to tell us that we should be at each other's throats, that these are different agendas, somehow.

I'm here to tell you that that is a lie. It is all the same agenda. If we care about our freedom, we must care about building and sustaining the character that gives us the right, and the effective ability, to defend and sustain and live decently with that freedom. Character and liberty go hand in hand; they cannot be separated. If they successfully undermine our sense of moral decency, our faith in our own moral capacity, then they will easily turn us against our right to keep and bear arms; they will easily turn us into people who lack the confidence to claim even the right to raise our own children.

So what's the answer? There is an answer, you know. And it's a fairly simple, I think, and clear agenda. In the course of this century, we have in essence followed a path of surrendering control.

We have surrendered control of our money. That's where it first started. We surrendered control of our money, first and foremost, I believe, at the beginning of this century. We surrendered control of our money when we did something that Engels would have applauded and our Founders would have condemned. We surrendered control of our money, when we allowed them to impose upon us a tax that -- whatever its terms, whatever its structure, whatever its amount -- can NEVER be compatible with the life of a free people. The income tax is a SLAVE tax, and it must be ABOLISHED!

You'll have some folks come before you, whose initials are Steve Forbes, and they will tell you . . . (pauses for laughter). You'll have some folks come before you, very nice folks, and they are making a suggestion that, from the point of view of our present oppression, might even look like an improvement. After all, if your oppressors have been accustomed to taking from you whatever they pleased, and have gone so far as to take from you twenty, and thirty, and forty, and fifty, and seventy, and eighty percent of what you earn, under certain circumstances; and someone comes along and says "Okay, we understand this is terrible; we'll promise not to take any more than fifteen." -- I guess at that point you would say "That's a relief! Thank you!"

There's only one problem with all of this, my friends. There's only one problem with being grateful when somebody comes and tells you that they are only going to take away fifteen percent of your money with the income tax. And that is that, as long as you have an income tax, they still have the right to take it all away. As long as you have an income tax, you are still living at the mercy of those to whom you have ceded this exorbitant and excessive power. You are still living in a country where the assumption is that you go out and earn a dollar, and they have a claim to fifteen cents of it before you have any say in it at all. This has GOT to END. And unless we end it, we will not return to the status of a free people.

So I'll say unequivocally: the first step in our agenda of reclaiming our liberty -- reclaim control of our money; abolish the income tax; return to the original Constitution of this country, under the terms of which the income tax was FORBIDDEN as a DANGER to our freedom!

The second -- and I think we are getting progressively close to the key, key element -- the second thing we had better do, if we care about the future, is we had better pay close attention to something that they all want to talk about, but that in the end, once again, when they come forward with their solutions, they never want to look at the real solution.

Because what is the future, after all? The future, as far as we all are concerned, is the consequence of that great privilege which God gives us to share in His creative power, that we can not only live this life, but engender it, so that new lives can be raised up. Our future looks back at us, it grows up before our eyes, it wins our heart, in the form of our children. And insofar as we have confidence that anything that we have done in this life is worth it, that anything we might do has some chance of lasting a little beyond our shadowy selves, it is because of the promise that they offer to us.

What have we done with them? I'll tell you what we've done: we have put them in government-dominated institutions, in the context of which we have abdicated our responsibility to them, put it in the hands of government, put it in the hands of educrats, let the Clintonites and the N.E.A. take over what ought to be our responsibilities. If we want to have that future of which we dream, then the next step after we reclaim control of our money -- and while we work to do it -- is we must reclaim control of our schools. We must take them BACK!

And I'll tell you, we can talk about the pros and cons of this or that plan, but there's only one principle that's gonna work. Where schools are concerned, if we want back the control of the schools, then there too we must take back control of the money. The money that is spent on education should follow the choice parents, not the choice of politicians and educrats and bureaucrats. Where WE want to send our children to school, is where ANY money spent in this country on education ought to go. And it should go there without interference from, and without the domination of our elected political or bureaucratic elites. This is our right; it is our responsibility before God, not theirs.

And that's why I've always been such a strong supporter of school choice and other things. We can talk about the different forms it can take. I think that it's going to be different in different places. That's why I firmly, always believe that education ought to be, to begin with, a LOCAL responsibility, not even a state responsibility. Education ought to be controlled at the grass roots level; people ought to control education where they live, in their neighborhoods and communities. And if the state, and if the federal government, get in any way involved, it should be not as dominators, but as cooperators, with the lead and the initiative of people at the grass roots. If we abdicate that grass roots responsibility -- and we have -- we are not just giving away our present power, we are throwing away our futures.

And believe me, this is true in a literal sense. Because I happen to firmly believe, for instance, that most important influence I will have on my children, if I can have any at all, is not going to be in the material things that I can do or not do for them. There are all kinds of families in America, all different economic levels. Some are better off than others. Are poor parents somehow less worthy than rich ones? I don't think so.

My parents were poor. They couldn't give me a lot in the way of material goods and comforts when I was growing up. But they gave me a lot of things that will always be more important than anything money can buy. They gave me a fear and respect for God. They gave me, as a consequence, a sense of respect for myself, and a sense that that respect meant that I had to respect other people, and abide by God's will in the way that I treated them. They gave me a sense of respect for my work, so that I would always try, at least, to do the best I could. These are not things you can buy; they are not things you can sell. But they are things that any decent parents, whatever may be their conditions, whatever may be their difficulties, whatever may be their background, they can pass things on to their children.

But not, of course, if you allow the government to interfere. If a government's going to come in and tell parents who are trying to raise their children in the fear of God that God's name cannot be mentioned in their education, if a judge is going to come along -- as he is doing down in Alabama . . . . A judge named DeMent. I've always thought he had a very appropriate name; there are just a couple of letters missing, though. I refer to him as Judge Demented. Judge Demented, down in Alabama, has actually put monitors in the hallways of a school, in order to make sure that nobody says any inappropriate prayer.

This is what we Americans have to fear, isn't it? -- Inappropriate praying. You've got folks who might want to pray before that football game: "Coach, don't do that; that's an inappropriate prayer." You have kids who might want to sit in the classroom and pray a little bit before that exam -- as a matter of fact, I know a lot of kids for whom this may be the only hope -- but Judge Demented says they better not say that prayer.

Whoever thought we would see the day in our American life when you would have courts dictating that our children could not pray, while bureaucrats dictated that they would have to watch pornography in the classrooms and take condoms from their teachers! This is wrong! They don't have the right to stop us from worshipping God, and they don't have the right to FORCE us to accept homosexual promiscuity and perversions. This is WRONG, and we DON'T have to sit still for it!

We must regain control of our schools, and by doing so reassert control of our families, our children's futures, our destiny.

(To be continued)

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Alan Keyes Showroom