cruiserman
New member
This is from the Alan Keyes 2000 e-mail updates:
3. Keyes turns racist attack into teaching moment
* * * *
Note: Ambassador Keyes this week released the following article on www.WorldNetDaily.com in response to a nationally distributed piece by
Bill Maxwell, widely condemned in the conservative press as a racist
attack. Mr. Maxwell's article ran as recently as this week in the San
Francisco Examiner.
* * * *
"Masters of the dream" - by Alan L. Keyes
Several weeks ago I caused something of a stir by suggesting that the
reason the media consistently fail to report the true strength of public
support that a certain conservative black presidential candidate receives
is that the media simply have no mental category for black
conservatives -- it just doesn't "compute" that there could be such a
thing. Racism, I pointed out, has less to do with malice than with
prejudice, with the superficial categorization of people into convenient
packages. Liberal inability even to consider the possibility of a black
conservative speaks volumes about the superficiality of liberalism itself.
These thoughts are on my mind again because of a newspaper column first
appearing in the Dec. 8 St. Petersburg Times, and since reprinted
nationally, written by a certain Mr. Bill Maxwell. The topic of the
article was the impossibility of the existence of a principled black
conservative. As you can imagine, it was a bit odd to read a proof of my
own non-existence. I want to put before you several of the comments Mr.
Maxwell makes about black Republicans -- not because he is speaking of me,
of course, but because the whole column is such a remarkable piece of
unbridled bigotry and superficial dismissal that it captures, in one
pungent whiff, the attitude I was suggesting that can be found quite
generally, if a bit more diluted, in the mainstream media.
Mr. Maxwell says that black Republicans are "perhaps the strangest" of all
the "creatures whose compositions or habits or appearances defy our sense
of logic and our way of viewing reality." "Some blacks," he says, "like
Gen. Powell, become Republicans because they see clear political advantage
or because they work for Republicans." Such servility is a relatively high
motive, apparently, compared to what motivates most black Republicans, who
are "mean-spirited self-loathers who rarely find anything positive to say
about fellow blacks." Mr. Maxwell concludes his article by saying that
"black Republicans delude themselves into believing that they alone are
responsible for their success."
Permit me to set the record straight. Just because we black Republicans
rightly regard big government welfare and racial preference schemes as new
forms of bondage and dependency does not mean that we take credit for the
sacrifices and achievements of our forbears.
The story of black Republicans -- and, indeed, the best and most
characteristic theme of the entire black experience in America -- is the
story of an escape from bondage into the light of truth and the freedom
that comes with truth. I call black Americans the masters of the American
dream. But we are not masters of the material prosperity that is commonly
understood to be the American dream. Instead, forced by the awful material
circumstances we faced during most of the first three centuries of
American civilization, black Americans became masters of the true American
dream of moral dignity.
Caught in the solid vise of laws ensuring their servitude, our ancestors
knew that there was little hope of physically overpowering the slave
system. But by developing their own virtues and discipline, they prevented
slavery from totally overpowering them. While the slave system attacked
the idea of the black family, enslaved blacks cherished it. While the
slave system denied them education, enslaved blacks valued it highly, and
sought it indefatigably. While the slave system sought to abuse their
sexuality for profit and secret gratification, enslaved blacks struggled
to respect the emotional bonds it forged between black men and women.
Always, as their first step in defending against the system that abused
them, they rejected the materialist calculation it applied to them, and as
they did so, they naturally tended to discover and rediscover the true
springs of happiness and dignity that God implants in all men. By
heroically taking initiative to assert their own interior standards of
worth against the slave-owners external impositions, black America's slave
ancestors prepared a legacy of moral strength and discipline. This moral
patrimony enabled their externally free descendents first to endure a
century of legal discrimination in quiet dignity, and then to wage the
successful public struggle for civil rights.
As a system of moral calculation, slavery was the ultimate form of
economic determinism. It rested on the assumption that blacks had no value
except their economic value. They were worth only what they could fetch on
the auction block. The key to rejecting the moral logic of slavery was to
reject this economic determinism, and to substitute for it a logic of life
based on the intrinsic worth of each human being in the eyes of God. The
ethical tenets of Christianity provided the ideal basis for this
alternative moral understanding. It was accordingly no accident that,
however much the enslavers tried to pervert Christianity into a dogma of
mindless obedience to authority, blacks themselves perceived and developed
its revolutionary antislavery implications. First in songs, then in
sermons, and finally, in public speeches and tracts, they made the point
that if all men belong to God, none can legitimately be owned by another.
The rejection of the slavery system of moral calculation was the key to
the survival of black self-esteem, despite the degrading vicissitudes of
life in bondage. No matter how thoroughly people were deprived in material
terms, an act of kindness, courage, or simple compassion could signal
their true worth. Moral dignity requires no equipment beyond the will to
do what is right. Even if we fail, the goodwill and faith revealed in the
attempt certify the quality of our lives. No matter how great the physical
power that another has over us, we can always preserve our moral autonomy
and with it, our self-respect.
The Christian ethical system made it possible for enslaved people to
understand that true freedom, moral freedom, was something their captors
could not take away. For the enslaved man or woman, the moment of real
personal emancipation came with the willingness to assume moral
responsibility for their own actions, when they realized that, even in
bondage, it was up to them to decide between good and evil. The process of
Christian spiritual rebirth represented this moment of insight in
religious terms. In order to be born again in baptism and received into
the Church, individuals had to recognize and come to terms with their own
moral capacity. They had to reject the slave system's implied link between
material condition and intrinsic worth. They had to realize that, before
their most important judge, their status, their eternal destiny, depended
on their own choices and His loving grace, and was not a necessary
consequence of their enslaved condition.
Against the economic determinism of the slave system, in which the worth
of a man was simply what he could be sold for, the enslaved blacks
asserted the idea of the intrinsic worth and personal moral autonomy
embodied in the Christian worldview. Of course, in the context of the
American Revolution and its aftermath, this assertion had a powerful
secular counterpart. The theory of unalienable rights and government by
consent of the governed on which the American Declaration of Independence
was based translated key Christian ethical precepts into the concepts and
language of political discussion. The idea of intrinsic worth became the
self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal. The idea of
moral autonomy became the key principle of self-government -- that is, to
be legitimate, government must be based upon the consent of the governed.
These ideas informed the course of black American history from the time of
Frederick Douglas, through Emancipation and the century that followed.
They culminated in the statesmanship of Martin Luther King, which
epitomized the moral wisdom of the black-American tradition. But after the
first great victories over the legal and political structures of racial
injustice, black leaders shifted their attention to the economic plight of
the black community in a way that implicitly accepted the fundamental
premise of the slavery system -- the idea that economic status determines
the quality and worth of human life.
By accepting this idea in the middle of the 20th century, black leaders
surrendered the key bastion of black survival in America. The black
American tradition, deeply rooted in Christian ethical principles,
supported the ability to resist the materialistic prejudices that could
damage black self-esteem and corrode the sense of moral responsibility.
Abandoning that tradition, liberal black leadership has delivered blacks,
and especially poor blacks, into the hands of a government-dominated
social-welfare network. Self-help and self-control were supplanted by
governmental "pork" -- "fatback," as our ancestors would have called it.
Equality under the law was replaced by a network of demeaning preferences
under affirmative action.
This system, like slavery, has demanded as the price of admission that
blacks surrender to ideology based on economic determinism. The
consequence of racial political patronage, morally illiterate welfare, and
the economic drug of set-asides, has been that a large segment of the
black community appears to belong to a permanent underclass composed of
inferior human beings who are in no position to take responsibility for
their own decisions and actions. The so-called black leadership has
exchanged the slave plantation for the handouts-and-preferences
plantation, and our people are tempted to lapse into a softer, but
spiritually deadly, servitude.
It is from this plantation that black Republicans seek freedom. But many
of us who stray from it become incomprehensible -- invisible -- to the
liberal media.
Mr. Maxwell finds it incomprehensible that a black American could make
such a choice to leave the plantation. He is blind not only to black
conservatives and the reasons that lead to their political choices. He is
blind as well to the chains that still are wrapped around so many souls of
those still on the plantation. It is deeply sad to see liberal America
unable even to consider the possibility that black men and women will
choose to pursue lives of moral integrity in accord with the deepest
principles of revealed truth, human nature, and the great founding
principles of the American republic.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
4. Keyes speaks out on South Carolina Flag
January 8, 2000
Columbia, South Carolina -- Alan Keyes responds to questions on Hardball
with Chris Matthews.
Matthews: "This whole fight over the state, over the old confederate flag
that's flying over the capitol in Columbia there, what do you make of that
fight? I didn't hear you say much tonight on it. What is your stand on
that fight?"
Keyes: "Well, I made a comment on it afterwards though because I thought
that two things are true. First, it is right what Governor Bush said, that
this is up to the people of South Carolina. Without any doubt, I say that
all the time myself. But at the same time, I think that when we address
this issue, we have to be clear that it must be done with a sense of
understanding for the feelings on both sides of the issue. The pride that
some take in that flag and it's history, but also the sense that many
black Americans have, that it was abused as a symbol of racism and
lynching and violence against blacks that evokes great fear and anxiety
and very painful memories. I thought that GW Bush showed no understanding
whatsoever of that sensitivity of black Americans tonight and I was indeed
shocked by that. And I tell you, I think that when addressing an issue
like this, you must show understanding for the feelings on both sides, I
have made every effort to do it myself. Tonight, he did not make that
effort and I think that that was too bad."
Matthews: "Let me ask you the same question that Brian Williams put to
him, the governor of Texas. What is your visceral reaction to the sight of
the Confederate battle flag on the Capitol building in South Carolina?"
Keyes: "See, I know a lot about that flag though, so my visceral reaction
is different. I know that that flag was not the symbol of slavery and
oppression. It was the battle flag, that was actually the symbol of the
blood sacrifices of many soldiers of the south who weren't just fighting
for slavery, but for their homes and their families and their states. I
understand the pride that people can take in that flag on that account. I
also know as a black American, though, that it was a flag abused by the Ku
Klux Klan and by the vigilantes and by the people who were lynching my
ancestors and intimidating people. And so I understand the fear and
anxiety and pain that black Americans feel when they see it. And in that
mode, I believe every time we address it, we must urge people to see the
feelings on both sides, and to seek reconciliation. Not to seek to score
political points, which I think GW Bush was doing tonight."
Matthews: "A candidate for the Republican nomination, the nomination for
the party of Lincoln, you're saying, should be sensitive and
representative of all the feelings of all the constituents of his
country."
Keyes: "That's exactly right. We must speak to people as Americans. What I
often say to people is, you know the flag that was the symbol of slavery
on the high seas for a long time was not the confederate battle flag, it
was sadly the stars and stripes. If through our sacrifice and history, we
can turn the stars and stripes into what it is today, a symbol of liberty
and freedom, then I think we should remind ourselves that through our
common work and common effort and common commitment to American moral
principle, we can make any flag a symbol of decency and cooperation. It's
the reconciliation that matters most. It's the common American heart that
matters most. Not the piece of cloth that is the symbol."
3. Keyes turns racist attack into teaching moment
* * * *
Note: Ambassador Keyes this week released the following article on www.WorldNetDaily.com in response to a nationally distributed piece by
Bill Maxwell, widely condemned in the conservative press as a racist
attack. Mr. Maxwell's article ran as recently as this week in the San
Francisco Examiner.
* * * *
"Masters of the dream" - by Alan L. Keyes
Several weeks ago I caused something of a stir by suggesting that the
reason the media consistently fail to report the true strength of public
support that a certain conservative black presidential candidate receives
is that the media simply have no mental category for black
conservatives -- it just doesn't "compute" that there could be such a
thing. Racism, I pointed out, has less to do with malice than with
prejudice, with the superficial categorization of people into convenient
packages. Liberal inability even to consider the possibility of a black
conservative speaks volumes about the superficiality of liberalism itself.
These thoughts are on my mind again because of a newspaper column first
appearing in the Dec. 8 St. Petersburg Times, and since reprinted
nationally, written by a certain Mr. Bill Maxwell. The topic of the
article was the impossibility of the existence of a principled black
conservative. As you can imagine, it was a bit odd to read a proof of my
own non-existence. I want to put before you several of the comments Mr.
Maxwell makes about black Republicans -- not because he is speaking of me,
of course, but because the whole column is such a remarkable piece of
unbridled bigotry and superficial dismissal that it captures, in one
pungent whiff, the attitude I was suggesting that can be found quite
generally, if a bit more diluted, in the mainstream media.
Mr. Maxwell says that black Republicans are "perhaps the strangest" of all
the "creatures whose compositions or habits or appearances defy our sense
of logic and our way of viewing reality." "Some blacks," he says, "like
Gen. Powell, become Republicans because they see clear political advantage
or because they work for Republicans." Such servility is a relatively high
motive, apparently, compared to what motivates most black Republicans, who
are "mean-spirited self-loathers who rarely find anything positive to say
about fellow blacks." Mr. Maxwell concludes his article by saying that
"black Republicans delude themselves into believing that they alone are
responsible for their success."
Permit me to set the record straight. Just because we black Republicans
rightly regard big government welfare and racial preference schemes as new
forms of bondage and dependency does not mean that we take credit for the
sacrifices and achievements of our forbears.
The story of black Republicans -- and, indeed, the best and most
characteristic theme of the entire black experience in America -- is the
story of an escape from bondage into the light of truth and the freedom
that comes with truth. I call black Americans the masters of the American
dream. But we are not masters of the material prosperity that is commonly
understood to be the American dream. Instead, forced by the awful material
circumstances we faced during most of the first three centuries of
American civilization, black Americans became masters of the true American
dream of moral dignity.
Caught in the solid vise of laws ensuring their servitude, our ancestors
knew that there was little hope of physically overpowering the slave
system. But by developing their own virtues and discipline, they prevented
slavery from totally overpowering them. While the slave system attacked
the idea of the black family, enslaved blacks cherished it. While the
slave system denied them education, enslaved blacks valued it highly, and
sought it indefatigably. While the slave system sought to abuse their
sexuality for profit and secret gratification, enslaved blacks struggled
to respect the emotional bonds it forged between black men and women.
Always, as their first step in defending against the system that abused
them, they rejected the materialist calculation it applied to them, and as
they did so, they naturally tended to discover and rediscover the true
springs of happiness and dignity that God implants in all men. By
heroically taking initiative to assert their own interior standards of
worth against the slave-owners external impositions, black America's slave
ancestors prepared a legacy of moral strength and discipline. This moral
patrimony enabled their externally free descendents first to endure a
century of legal discrimination in quiet dignity, and then to wage the
successful public struggle for civil rights.
As a system of moral calculation, slavery was the ultimate form of
economic determinism. It rested on the assumption that blacks had no value
except their economic value. They were worth only what they could fetch on
the auction block. The key to rejecting the moral logic of slavery was to
reject this economic determinism, and to substitute for it a logic of life
based on the intrinsic worth of each human being in the eyes of God. The
ethical tenets of Christianity provided the ideal basis for this
alternative moral understanding. It was accordingly no accident that,
however much the enslavers tried to pervert Christianity into a dogma of
mindless obedience to authority, blacks themselves perceived and developed
its revolutionary antislavery implications. First in songs, then in
sermons, and finally, in public speeches and tracts, they made the point
that if all men belong to God, none can legitimately be owned by another.
The rejection of the slavery system of moral calculation was the key to
the survival of black self-esteem, despite the degrading vicissitudes of
life in bondage. No matter how thoroughly people were deprived in material
terms, an act of kindness, courage, or simple compassion could signal
their true worth. Moral dignity requires no equipment beyond the will to
do what is right. Even if we fail, the goodwill and faith revealed in the
attempt certify the quality of our lives. No matter how great the physical
power that another has over us, we can always preserve our moral autonomy
and with it, our self-respect.
The Christian ethical system made it possible for enslaved people to
understand that true freedom, moral freedom, was something their captors
could not take away. For the enslaved man or woman, the moment of real
personal emancipation came with the willingness to assume moral
responsibility for their own actions, when they realized that, even in
bondage, it was up to them to decide between good and evil. The process of
Christian spiritual rebirth represented this moment of insight in
religious terms. In order to be born again in baptism and received into
the Church, individuals had to recognize and come to terms with their own
moral capacity. They had to reject the slave system's implied link between
material condition and intrinsic worth. They had to realize that, before
their most important judge, their status, their eternal destiny, depended
on their own choices and His loving grace, and was not a necessary
consequence of their enslaved condition.
Against the economic determinism of the slave system, in which the worth
of a man was simply what he could be sold for, the enslaved blacks
asserted the idea of the intrinsic worth and personal moral autonomy
embodied in the Christian worldview. Of course, in the context of the
American Revolution and its aftermath, this assertion had a powerful
secular counterpart. The theory of unalienable rights and government by
consent of the governed on which the American Declaration of Independence
was based translated key Christian ethical precepts into the concepts and
language of political discussion. The idea of intrinsic worth became the
self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal. The idea of
moral autonomy became the key principle of self-government -- that is, to
be legitimate, government must be based upon the consent of the governed.
These ideas informed the course of black American history from the time of
Frederick Douglas, through Emancipation and the century that followed.
They culminated in the statesmanship of Martin Luther King, which
epitomized the moral wisdom of the black-American tradition. But after the
first great victories over the legal and political structures of racial
injustice, black leaders shifted their attention to the economic plight of
the black community in a way that implicitly accepted the fundamental
premise of the slavery system -- the idea that economic status determines
the quality and worth of human life.
By accepting this idea in the middle of the 20th century, black leaders
surrendered the key bastion of black survival in America. The black
American tradition, deeply rooted in Christian ethical principles,
supported the ability to resist the materialistic prejudices that could
damage black self-esteem and corrode the sense of moral responsibility.
Abandoning that tradition, liberal black leadership has delivered blacks,
and especially poor blacks, into the hands of a government-dominated
social-welfare network. Self-help and self-control were supplanted by
governmental "pork" -- "fatback," as our ancestors would have called it.
Equality under the law was replaced by a network of demeaning preferences
under affirmative action.
This system, like slavery, has demanded as the price of admission that
blacks surrender to ideology based on economic determinism. The
consequence of racial political patronage, morally illiterate welfare, and
the economic drug of set-asides, has been that a large segment of the
black community appears to belong to a permanent underclass composed of
inferior human beings who are in no position to take responsibility for
their own decisions and actions. The so-called black leadership has
exchanged the slave plantation for the handouts-and-preferences
plantation, and our people are tempted to lapse into a softer, but
spiritually deadly, servitude.
It is from this plantation that black Republicans seek freedom. But many
of us who stray from it become incomprehensible -- invisible -- to the
liberal media.
Mr. Maxwell finds it incomprehensible that a black American could make
such a choice to leave the plantation. He is blind not only to black
conservatives and the reasons that lead to their political choices. He is
blind as well to the chains that still are wrapped around so many souls of
those still on the plantation. It is deeply sad to see liberal America
unable even to consider the possibility that black men and women will
choose to pursue lives of moral integrity in accord with the deepest
principles of revealed truth, human nature, and the great founding
principles of the American republic.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
4. Keyes speaks out on South Carolina Flag
January 8, 2000
Columbia, South Carolina -- Alan Keyes responds to questions on Hardball
with Chris Matthews.
Matthews: "This whole fight over the state, over the old confederate flag
that's flying over the capitol in Columbia there, what do you make of that
fight? I didn't hear you say much tonight on it. What is your stand on
that fight?"
Keyes: "Well, I made a comment on it afterwards though because I thought
that two things are true. First, it is right what Governor Bush said, that
this is up to the people of South Carolina. Without any doubt, I say that
all the time myself. But at the same time, I think that when we address
this issue, we have to be clear that it must be done with a sense of
understanding for the feelings on both sides of the issue. The pride that
some take in that flag and it's history, but also the sense that many
black Americans have, that it was abused as a symbol of racism and
lynching and violence against blacks that evokes great fear and anxiety
and very painful memories. I thought that GW Bush showed no understanding
whatsoever of that sensitivity of black Americans tonight and I was indeed
shocked by that. And I tell you, I think that when addressing an issue
like this, you must show understanding for the feelings on both sides, I
have made every effort to do it myself. Tonight, he did not make that
effort and I think that that was too bad."
Matthews: "Let me ask you the same question that Brian Williams put to
him, the governor of Texas. What is your visceral reaction to the sight of
the Confederate battle flag on the Capitol building in South Carolina?"
Keyes: "See, I know a lot about that flag though, so my visceral reaction
is different. I know that that flag was not the symbol of slavery and
oppression. It was the battle flag, that was actually the symbol of the
blood sacrifices of many soldiers of the south who weren't just fighting
for slavery, but for their homes and their families and their states. I
understand the pride that people can take in that flag on that account. I
also know as a black American, though, that it was a flag abused by the Ku
Klux Klan and by the vigilantes and by the people who were lynching my
ancestors and intimidating people. And so I understand the fear and
anxiety and pain that black Americans feel when they see it. And in that
mode, I believe every time we address it, we must urge people to see the
feelings on both sides, and to seek reconciliation. Not to seek to score
political points, which I think GW Bush was doing tonight."
Matthews: "A candidate for the Republican nomination, the nomination for
the party of Lincoln, you're saying, should be sensitive and
representative of all the feelings of all the constituents of his
country."
Keyes: "That's exactly right. We must speak to people as Americans. What I
often say to people is, you know the flag that was the symbol of slavery
on the high seas for a long time was not the confederate battle flag, it
was sadly the stars and stripes. If through our sacrifice and history, we
can turn the stars and stripes into what it is today, a symbol of liberty
and freedom, then I think we should remind ourselves that through our
common work and common effort and common commitment to American moral
principle, we can make any flag a symbol of decency and cooperation. It's
the reconciliation that matters most. It's the common American heart that
matters most. Not the piece of cloth that is the symbol."
