Quotes - Alan Keyes

Alan Keyes on the Second Amendment:

The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights.  That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights. In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty, to resist and overthrow the power responsible.  That duty requires that we always maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if necessary, something that it is very hard to do if the government has all the weapons.  A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is a fundamental DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.

Alan Keyes on cutting the budget:

How phony can you get? ... Do they ever ask us before they raise taxes? ... I say let's not wait to see if their budget can take it. Let's just cut the taxes and have them figure it out like we have to figure it out after they take our money.

Alan Keyes on welfare:

It is a concept that emphasizes human needs while neglecting human capacities. It stresses individual helplessness and weakness, undermining the sense of personal responsibility. It justifies ever greater concentrations of power in the hands of the state, leaving people each day more powerless to effect and improve their own condition. This bad concept leads to institutions and policies that disable individual initiative, motivation, and creativity. Faced with political and social structures that embody the assumption of individual impotence, individuals acquire the passive habits and expectations that go with it.

Alan Keyes on bureaucracies:

Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients. They receive its services, but only insofar as they conform to its authority. The bureaucracy is like a computer; it responds only to those who address it in the proper form. In this sense, a bureaucratic government program has a double meaning: The program serves its clients, but it also programs them.

We must take away the government’s credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts. That’s why a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, with barriers to both borrowing and spending, is the best way to secure budget discipline.

I read American sagas (of the west) and I do not see people who went in search of material things. I see people who wrote down that what they sought was an escape from an old world which dictated their conscience and established their merit based on who their parents.

That is one of the reasons I oppose this whole Affirmative Action business. We are not supposed to be judged based on what our ancestors did or suffered. We are supposed to be judged as individuals, based on what we are able to achieve.

And when you tell me that somebody’s skin color or gender is going to determine their prospects in this world, that is turning the clock back hundreds of years. Back to a time before this nation declared that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator; not by their ancestry, not by their skin color, not by their gender, not by Congress, not by the Constitution, and not by the laws.

Keyes asked [a group of 5th grade students] where their rights came from.
“The Bill of Rights?” one youngster asked. No, said Keyes.
“Us?” No.
“The government?” No.
“Martin Luther King?” No, “but he understood where our rights came from,” Keyes said.
“The Constitution?” No.
Finally, a girl raised her hand, sat up straight, and said, “The rights come from God.” Keyes had his answer.

Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country. It is merely another government patronage program that secures money and jobs for the few people who benefit from it, and breeds resentment in the many who do not. It divides us as a people.