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September 18, 2004 Alan honors President Reagan at GOP Convention Speech to the National Federation of Republican Assemblies Alan Keyes
And I noticed, during the course of all the discussions about Reagan, a few which I participated in, that many of them focused on his presidency. And we had the media people talking about what a great communicator he was, and so forth, and so on, and then other people talking about how everybody supported him, and this one and that one were praising him, because everybody was brought in to agree with them. And I just sat there chuckling to myself, during some of these discussions, you see, because they were talking about Ronald Reagan the President, and I was remembering the man who made him president. I was remembering the man who had stood up before the Republican convention and in nominating Barry Goldwater had presented a speech that outlined in crystal clear terms his commitment to principle. His commitment to the anti-communism that many criticized him for over the course of his career. I was remembering the man who, in spite of every ridicule and every criticism, walked the walk for twenty years, inspiring a whole new generation of conservatives with his perseverance, with his clarity, with his integrity that he never sacrificed for the sake of false victory in politics. I remembered that man. And I remembered that the courage that we saw when he was president, the willingness to confront evil with truth and to declare before the world what it was, did not begin when he occupied the White House. It was there in his heart, and in his speeches, and in his actions, every day, and every year, when he walked the walk of truth that actually built the character that had sustained him in the White House. I remembered that man. And in remembering that man, I realize that we are called, we, ourselves, to be faithful, in a context of an understanding of politics that has been debased and degraded by the understanding that it is "just about power." If politics was just about power, you realize, don't you, that America would not exist? 'Cause if politics is just about power, then justice is the good of the stronger, and whoever can amass the most power can rule those others without compunction. The notion that people should govern themselves, that there is a limit to what the power of government has the right to do to individuals, that no matter how much force you amass, there is still a kernel of dignity in each and every human being, in each and every child, in each and every family, in each and every community, in each and every state, that tyrants and authoritarians have no right to violate. That is not about power. That is about principle. That is about justice. That is about dignity. That is about standing for the worth of this human life. And it was that kind of integrity that we all know sustained Ronald Reagan as he inspired this nation to do what is most necessary, and was, against the scourge of communism. One of the great lessons that I take from the way that he confronted the Soviet Empire during his presidency was to remember what sometimes in our political wars we have a tendency to forget. Something that all the great writers on war, including von Clausewitz, pointed out repeatedly. That at the end of the day, war isn't about the clash of physical armies. It is about the clash of moral wills. One does not make war just upon the enemy's army. One makes war upon his mind and upon his spirit. Confuse the mind and break the spirit, and you will win the war. And I still remember that at the end of the nineteen-seventies, during the midst of the Carter era, do you remember that era? We were a mighty nation, we were still Number One, we had the strongest economy, we had the mightiest army, we were up against a paper tiger that could not sustain its own economic production, whose military might was in fact, a myth, whose science could not master the real complexities of modern technology, and you do remember, don't you, in the late seventies, we cowered 'neath the shadow of that tyranny as if it was real. And, for all our strength, we were hesitant, and we were timid, until finally, under Jimmy Carter, we were brought low in the deserts of the Middle East, made to stand hostage before the world. And it was not just our diplomats who were hostage. It was our will, it was our confidence, it was our understanding of ourselves. And you know the greatest triumph of Ronald Reagan? The greatest triumph of Ronald Reagan was to free the mind of America from the shadow of that paralysis. The greatest achievement of Ronald Reagan was to wake up again and liberate the great spirit of this country, to restore our confidence, so that our physical strength would be matched by a coherence and strength of will that did not flag or fail until the Soviet Union was no more. That was his contribution. We need to remember this, and I'm especially remembering it, at a very practical level in my present race in Illinois. And if you don't mind, I'm going to digress just for a moment, to give you a sense of the flavor of this, because it's directly relevant to what I've just said. I am locked in a race with someone who is continually described almost in Homeric fashion. The reason I say that is because Homer had this way of attaching epithets to all the characters, so he would never say Achilles, it would always have to be "Valorous, Brave Achilles" or something, or "Swift Footed Achilles" and things of this kind. He would never say Odysseus, it was always "Manly Wild Odysseus" or something; he would always have a little name in front. And you've noticed that my opponent Barack Obama, the media always puts a little epithet in front of him. "The Democrat Rising Star, Barack Obama," "Rising Star Barack Obama." And they tell me that they are not biased. I'm locked in a little battle with the Illinois media right now, because I've had the nerve to identify them as minions of the Democrat Party. And they are all upset with me about this But there we are, with the "Rising Star Barack Obama." Who is this guy? I was, like everybody else in the country, taken in this whole business, before I got the call from the folks in Illinois, to come and take a look and go with it. And as a lot of you probably know, you've heard the story that I said no, of course, because I was living in Maryland. First time I got the phone call, from an old friend of mine, saying, would you think about running for U.S. Senate in Illinois? I said, well no, I wouldn't, because this is going to be a problem And so they called, and called, and finally he arrested my attention in one very important way. Because he said, if you take a look at this man, you'll find that he is so hard-lined-radical-left, that in twenty years you will sit down, and if he's waltzing into the White House, you will ask yourself why you didn't take the chance to stop him twenty years before when you might have done it. And that was the basis, by the way. That was the basis. That arresting question is the reason I decided, okay, I had better stop and take a look. It doesn't feel comfortable to me, I don't know if it's right, but I'll look. And you know what I found? I found an individual who did not at all correspond to the impression I had received from that speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention. A speech, by the way, if you go through and read it carefully, is a masterful work of non-presentation. It's kind of the un-speech. One of those speeches in which many words are put together, and they sound really good, and then when you read them through, they say nothing. There was not a single, substantive thought, policy recommendation, consequence, principle, anywhere in his speech. It was a truly masterful work of disguise, in which he spun out a great deal of verbiage that was intended by his nice and affable manner, to make everybody think, "Oh, that's a moderate guy." But then I looked at his record. And the first thing that jumped out at me, as a lot of you would guess, is that here is a man And there was a bill to stop it. And the United States Senate, in a similar bill, passed ninety-eight to zero. Even Teddy Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski, could not find it in their abortion-seared consciences to vote for this practice. But Barack Obama voted to let it continue. I don't care how he smiles; I don't care how he charms; a heart so hard that it can ignore the cries of that child is too hard for Illinois. Too hard for the U.S. Senate. Too hard for America. Too hard for decency. Too hard for me. And that made me look at the rest of the record. And what I found was a hard-line ideologue, a leftist academic mentality so seared that there was not ever a consolidation of government power that he didn't seem to support. There was no violation of individual rights, especially Second Amendment rights, that he wouldn't tolerate. No common sense involved, no respect even for the right of citizens to defend themselves. I looked at this and I thought, "I've got to do this." And then I started looking at who he was. Who did he turn out to be? He's an obscure senator from a little district in Illinois, in which he has never faced actually any serious opposition. He lost his only Federal race in the district in which he lives, against a guy named Bobby Rush, seventy to thirty. During the debates that preceded the Democrat primary in which two guys who were ahead of him in the running had self-destructed. If you read the articles, in nowhere in these debates did he distinguish himself. And I looked at this and said, now, wait a minute. Do you know what we're faced with here? We are faced with a fiction, we are faced with a lie, we are faced with a Democrat media-created masquerade. We are faced with a war on the minds of Illinois Republicans. A war on the minds of Illinois voters. A war, indeed, on the mind of America. To put a mask in front of the record and the reality and get us to accept that somehow, the inevitable coronation of this man whose views correspond to an extremism that is so far out there that even the most extremist Democrats would not vote as he has done. Think about it. This is one of the most prime examples I've encountered in my life, of a successful war on the mind, leading at least possibly to an easy victory for people who in fact could not have won it in any other way. Because if the truth is known about this man he would be defeated. And that's the secret, isn't it. I think it's the secret that Ronald Reagan exemplified in so many aspects of his career, when he called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire, when he talked about the need to abolish the Department of Education, when he was willing to look people in the eye and talk about less government, not more, when he was willing to call a Communist a Communist, and to invite Americans to stand tall in defense of liberty against the oppression it represented. All he was doing at every stage in his career was insisting on speaking the simple truth, representing with integrity his sincere beliefs about what was good for America and for his community. I believe, in the end, that is the kind of politics freedom needs Look at the career of Ronald Reagan Instead, for all the time it takes, the heart it takes, the heartbreak it can take, in years in the wilderness, facing defeats instead of victories, yet you will move people, one heart at a time, one faith at a time, one intense and fiery commitment at a time, until finally you have put together a community of principle, that will not only stand the test of election, but will stand the test of war, that will stand the challenges even of the greatest evil empire the world has seen, that will stand the test that a nation must stand if it is to survive. This I believe is what we are challenged to offer to America now. For it faces, now, an insidious challenge that will in the end lead not to our destruction from without but quite possibly to the destruction of our liberty from within, as we surrender to the fears engendered by terror and to the degradation engendered by our own loss of conscience and principle. I think it is only by recurring to the example of Ronald Reagan, to his statesmanship, to his insistence on a politics of principle, come-what-may, that we shall be able to forge, in ourselves, the character, and in our country the destiny, that will fulfill the great promise America is supposed to represent. In my mind, it is the survival of this nation, of its freedom; it is the fulfillment of its destiny, that is the only and greatest tribute that we owe to a statesman like Ronald Reagan. Let us commit ourselves, here and now, that we, though we may seem sometimes to be few in number, yet we are great in heart. Though we may seem sometimes to be obscure in the eyes of the media and the world, yet I believe we are bright in the eyes of the Lord. His hand shall strengthen us, His strength shall encourage us, His wisdom shall guide us, until together we are able to forge, as Reagan did, that community of hope and principle that will pull this nation back from the brink of its own destruction, and set it again on the path that fulfills the hope, the better dream, the better destiny, that you encounter. God bless you. Click here to see the rest of the address. |
