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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by Gordon Francis Corbett
Is Ambassador Alan Lee Keyes bad news for those who cherish Constitutional ideals of limited government and individual's rights? I have almost decided that the correct answer is, "Yes." When Keyes ran for the presidency in 1996, his learning and wit in Republican "debates" turned Bob Dole into a Swiss cheese. Subsequently, Dole's authority in the Republican Party let him exclude Keyes, even to having him arrested for trying to "crash" a joint press conference in Atlanta. Subsequently, Dole concentrated on showing voters how much Republican moguls loved him. Many people who had liked Keyes resented this. They regarded Dole's excluding his most articulate competitor as unfair, and they stayed away from the polls in droves. When he resumed running in 1999, Ambassador Keyes showed up his fellows in one joint press conference after another. None could match his sparkle, his brains, or his apparent honesty. None, except for Forbes, seemed willing to try. I assumed that, except for Forbes, they were really running to be George W. Bush's vice-presidential nominee, and I wrote them off in contempt. Keyes was supposedly above such a thing. I believed that he ran to expose our ruling Demopublican monopoly and to lay a foundation for their ouster in 2004. This, for my own reasons, I liked. Let me be candid. As an Objectivist, I could not warm up to Keyes if we were being cremated together. From his cosmology, to his ethics, to his politics, Keyes' perspective is bounded by his religion. My guess is that Keyes agrees with Orestes Augustus Brownson, who wrote that the rightful purpose of government is to make the conduct of man conform to the laws of God. This, I suspect, is why Keyes favors a Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. Because such an amendment would remove one more state's prerogative from the Tenth Amendment, I oppose it. Still, I liked much that Keyes said because much of his rhetoric was Constitutionalist. The Constitution is a standard to which many Libertarians and Conservatives repair; Keyes defended it with a reasoned integrity that made his opponents look like klutzes. Nevertheless, I felt uneasy. With Bush in the race, Keyes had what fighter pilots call a "target-rich environment." George W. Bush is inarticulate, bereft of ideas, and perhaps corrupt to boot. His own nephew boasts proudly that, as Governor of Texas, "for economic reasons, he has always fought for the rights of illegal aliens." His team of advisers is headed by Condoleezza Rice, a black intellectual who, like his father, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Council on Foreign Relations is a liberal think-tank and policy lobby that incorporated on 29 July 1921. It has dominated every presidential cabinet since Herbert Hoover's. The Council includes many leaders from America's commanding heights: business, communications, education, finance, philanthropy, politics, and trade-unionism. It supposedly wants only to foster good fellowship and the study of foreign nations, as would do a high-class combination of Rotary and the National Geographic Society. Nevertheless, although they deny pushing an agenda, the back issues of their magazine "Foreign Affairs," and their members' speeches and actions, show a desire to build a world government. For further details, please see James Perloff's book, "The Shadows of Power." Keyes never mentioned any of this. He attacked other candidates' positions, e.g., John McCain's pretended opposition to abortion; but he never opened his mouth to attack the Council. Consequently, the public never learned how many of the candidates were members: Gore, Bradley, McCain, and, by association, Bush. Perhaps his reticence stems in part from his having been appointed an ambassador because of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who is a member of the Council. Take another issue. Until late in the primary campaign, Keyes rarely mentioned the Second Amendment. Forbidding victims tools they need to defend themselves is a moral obscenity, and anyone possessing oratorical gifts like Keyes' could have pointed this out in living color. Nevertheless, I only heard Keyes defend the Second Amendment when he had already lost the campaign, and then only to lambaste Clinton. Although Clinton deserves harsh treatment, George W. Bush has taken a firm stand for so-called "gun control," and Keyes would have done Second Amendment adherents a world of good by attacking Bush's stance on victim disarmament. Of course, slicing and dicing his party's future nominee would have been viewed as disloyal, to say the least. The same pattern obtains elsewhere. He surprised his opponents when he used his closing comment in one "debate" to denounce the W.T.O. meetings in Seattle. He could have added that they are part of the New World Order and that any truly Americanist president would withdraw us, not only from the W.T.O., N.A.F.T.A., and G.A.T.T., but from the organization under which they were founded: the United Nations. Instead, he said only that although he disagreed with the Seattle rioters' violence, we should not belong to the W.T.O. because it allows foreign dictators to set our trade policy. Even if one assumes that he lacked the time to say more, he has never said flatly that we must leave the United Nations. The United Nations has been called, "the House that Hiss built," because Soviet spy Alger Hiss was Secretary-General of the U.N.'s founding conference in San Francisco. From that beginning, its long chain of secretaries-general, its Charter, its Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and even its insignia, all have reflected Socialist and Soviet thinking. I have never heard Keyes mention any of this. In fact, given his ostensible philosophy, Keyes' campaign is remarkable not so much for what he says, but for what he omits. This is very troubling in a candidate who holds himself out as unorthodox. The truly unorthodox politician is loyal to his philosophy, which he offers to the people. He tells them why his philosophy is right, how it applies to given situations, and promises to do specific things accordingly. The people then decide if they want his philosophy and his specific promises. If they elect him, they then demand that he redeem his pledges. On the other hand, the "hack" is not loyal to a philosophy, but to his party's leaders, whom he promises to obey. That pledge requires promising the people nothing the leaders forbid. Therefore, except to back the leaders' goals, he speaks in windy generalities. That precludes breaking forbidden pledges, facilitates making deals, and promotes his advancement. Keyes' words reflect many unorthodox sentiments, but his failure to promise specific concomitant actions may indicate an aversion to offending his party's leaders. Keyes goofed in Iowa. He received fourteen per cent of the votes, which confounded more pessimistic predictors. Keyes then told a crowd, "This is a victory for Almighty God!" One would expect God to win at least fifty-one per cent. All this makes a discomfiting picture, but the painting has recently descended into chiaroscuro. Keyes' "grassroots" officials in Utah and in Oregon have been boosting him to be George W. Bush's running-mate. This would make sense if Bush were a Constitutionalist, but Bush is a Liberal in Republican clothing. Keyes' running with him would belie his every Constitutionalist statement and betray his every Constitutionalist follower. Keyes may not know what his organizers are doing. Too, they may be trying to do it for innocent motives. Perhaps they know nothing about the Council on Foreign Relations and The Trilateral Commission, and simply want their man to win the second-highest post in the country. One reply I received from an Oregonian organizer leads me to think that this is true of her, at least. Keyes himself is another matter. If he runs with Bush, we should wash our hands of him.
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