... it was a vision of freedom based upon the fear of God and the respect for law. And why is it that out of the mouths of all our statesman we hear all these great emotional words but they won't speak the simple truths that all our founders from Washington through Jefferson to Lincoln and every President spoke until we got to our own cowardly times. We are not going to remain a free people if we insist on being a corrupt and licentious people. We are not going to remain a free people if we arrogate to ourselves the right to destroy the rights of others. And that's exactly what we are doing when we embrace the so-call pro-choice the truly pro-abortion agenda. My friends, I think it is empty to praise the courage of the men and women who have died in the service of this country's freedom and its principles and yet decide that we shall lack the courage to stand up for those principles --many or few or even alone, if we must. Because that is, in fact, the courage that built America. This nation was not, as some would have us believe, a dream of material progress and prosperity and great cities and mountains of money. I'm glad that we have achieved that prosperity even though it came at much expense to some of my forebears, those who toiled in the depths of slavery. They had an understanding of the real dream of American freedom. It's the dream of moral dignity that comes from respecting our true moral capacity. It's the dream of self-government that comes from respecting the fact in the end freedom is not just a choice, it is not just an opportunity. It can be a burden and a sacrifice and an obligation, and, above all, it is the obligation to respect the truth of our moral identity. That moral identity can unite us across every line of race and color and creed so long as we have the courage to stand for it. I think you know by now looking at the Clinton administration that if we as Republicans abandon that line of principle it will surely be abandoned in America. But I can also tell you this in warning, that if you abandon that line of principle, there are Americans that will fight, few or many, alone if we must, to make sure it prevails. At every point in our history when we had a choice between right and wrong, in the end, this country chose what was right and we can be grateful for it and I think we shall do it again because we know that the real heroes in America are those who in their families and their daily lives respect the truth that we must meet the obligations and sacrifices of freedom before we claim its privileges and benefits That means as well that, come what may, even if it means that we must sacrifice in our personal lives, we have to stand where our founders stood on the belief that you cannot have the right to do what is wrong, but that if we build self-government on a true adherence to the principles of justice then we shall hold up a beacon of right and hope for all of humankind to understand the true destiny of mankind.
Alan Keyes ~1995
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