Keyes: WorldNetDaily presidential candidate survey responses

Alan Keyes, Republican Party

Q: How do you propose to protect American interests in Panama, now that
Communist
China, by President Clinton's own admission, has de facto control over the
Panama
Canal?

A: The United States cannot accept Communist Chinese control over the
Panama Canal,
ever. The American government can end Chinese control over the canal by
telling the
Panamanian government, privately, that Chinese influence over the canal must
end, by a
date certain. This message should be conveyed in a manner that makes it
clear that if the
Panamanians do not act responsibly, we will reassert control over the canal
by more
direct means. It is difficult to think of a matter in which American
security, economic,
and political interests are more obviously involved, and it is extremely
unlikely that
Panama intends to cast its lot with the Chinese if we press the matter. We
simply need a
president willing to do so.

Q: Do you believe government has a constitutional right to collect a
percentage of citizens'
earnings? If so, is there an appropriate maximum cap?

TRENDING: Is America having a near-death experience, or is this the end?

A: The income tax, made Constitutional by the 16th Amendment, grants the
government the
right to collect as much of a citizen's earnings as it pleases. But while
such confiscation is
literally Constitutional now, it is tyrannical in nature. It will be the top
economic priority
of my administration to repeal the 16th Amendment, abolish the income tax
and the IRS
that enforces it, and re-establish a system of funding for the federal
government that is
consistent with the letter and spirit of our original Constitution of
liberty. This means
funding the government with a combination of tariffs, duties, and excise
taxes - sales
taxes.

Q: Do you view the specific declarations enumerated in the U.S.
Constitution as mandates to
be followed and adhered to literally, according to their original intent, or
do you regard
the Constitution as a "living" document best interpreted in the current
cultural context?

A: The Constitution must be read neither as a mirror for current desires,
nor as a
simplistically technical document. It must be read as any great text is
read - with serious
and careful desire to understand its real meaning. This means that we must
recall that, in
America, it is the citizen's vocation to become enough of a political
philosopher to
understand what the Constitution is - the document that brought the
principles of the
Declaration down to earth, and embodied them in a regime of ordered liberty.

The attempt to read the Constitution by judging it in light of the
passions, philosophies,
and political agendas of the current time is simply the attempt to overthrow
Constitutional government. We do not have rule of law except in the measure
that the
Constitution is read literally, which does indeed mean that we must read it
according to
the intent of its authors. This does not mean that there is no place for
interpretation. It
means that we must interpret the Constitution according to the principles
which we know
informed its writing - principles which are found most clearly stated in the
Declaration of
Independence. It is from the philosophy of government so brilliantly
summarized in the
Declaration that we learn the reasons for many of the specifically
enumerated powers in
the Constitution, the operative meaning of key terms used, and the source
and
significance of the rights that are reserved to the people. Without the
Declaration, for
example, it would be hard indeed to know the purpose of the 2nd Amendment,
and thus
the proper grounds on which we must defend it.

Q: What is your position on U.S. membership in the United Nations, and
would you do
anything to end that membership?

A: The fundamental goal of the American statesman must be to maintain an
independent
sense of sovereign American interests and principles, and to pursue those
interests and
principles in the world with prudence and courage, always with the knowledge
that, in the
end, the United States is responsible for its own destiny - not the United
Nations or
anybody else.

Whatever benefits of international cooperation and consultation the
United Nations has
made possible, it has from its flawed founding been a source of pernicious
and
dangerously naive globalist dreams. It is now clear that some American
politicians have
been so corrupted by internationalism that they will not resist the
temptation to erect the
United Nations into a supra-national entity that undermines our sovereignty.

Should it prove impossible to fight this tendency by other means, the
United States would
have to withdraw from the United Nations, while clearly maintaining our
ongoing
commitment to our international responsibilities as a sovereign nation and
world leader.
Because it is more important that the United States of America should
survive in freedom
than that the United Nations should survive at all.

Q: What is your position on the current process of presidential executive
orders, and what
would you do as president to rectify any abuses of executive orders
perpetrated by
previous presidents?

A: Executive orders are necessary, and were seen by our Founders to be
necessary, in the
normal exercise of executive authority. The president, like any executive,
must have the
power to move the executive branch of government to action. But this power
is limited by
its nature to those orders necessary to accomplish the specific and limited
goal of taking
care that the laws be faithfully executed, or to respond to truly
extraordinary
circumstances.

The current administration has abused its authority to issue executive
orders by treating it
as an authority to legislate from the White House. The practice is
tyrannical in the most
formal sense - uniting the legislative and executive powers in one man - and
repudiating
it is a necessary first step to the recovery of Constitutional liberty.

On my first day in office I will revoke all unconstitutional executive
orders, and I will tell
the country why I am doing so. I will issue no executive orders that are not
necessary for
the functioning of the executive branch. The power is, to some extent,
shaped by the use
that particular executives make of it. I will do my best to renew the
precedent that the
President does not make law.

Q: In your opinion, does the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
guarantee the right
of law-abiding citizens to possess modern firearms and ammunition?

A: The 2nd Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders
merely to allow
us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our hearts' content. This is
not to say that
hunting rabbits and turkeys for the family dinner, or defending against
dangers, were not
anticipated uses for firearms, particularly on the frontier - this is true.
But above all, the
Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that, after a long train of abuses in
which
government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will
always 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, and why it must be understood to guarantee
the right of
law-abiding citizens to possess modern firearms and ammunition.

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 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.

Q: Do you believe unborn babies have any rights?

A: If the Declaration of Independence states our creed, there can be no
right to abortion,
since it means denying the most fundamental right of all -- the right to
life - to human
offspring in the womb. The Declaration states plainly that we are all
created equal,
endowed by our Creator with our human rights.

But if human beings can decide who is human and who is not, the doctrine
of God-given
rights is utterly corrupted. Abortion is the unjust taking of a human life
and a breach of
the fundamental principles of our public moral creed.

Q: Since the Constitution does not enumerate a federal role in education,
would you favor
abolishing the Department of Education in favor of returning control of
education to the
states?

A: I do favor abolishing the Department of Education, but not in order to
return control of
education to the state governments. We should eliminate the federal role in
K-12
education, and return that control not to the states, but to the parents and
the truly local
community in which they live.

Q: Are you in favor of the Strategic Defense Initiative? If not, why not?
If yes, what would
you do to accelerate its implementation?

A: The Strategic Defense Initiative is crucial to the national security
of the United States,
and I would pursue its rapid development and deployment as the top priority
of security
policy. The best way to accelerate the implementation of SDI is to make it
the keystone
of national security policy, and to pursue that policy with intelligence and
energy. When I
do that, the Congress will vote the money and the system will be built and
deployed
sooner than any of its critics think possible.

Q: What steps would you take as president to ensure that the most feared
federal government
agencies -- the IRS, FBI and BATF -- are never again used to terrorize
citizens for
political reasons?

A: Abolishing the income tax will end IRS tyranny by eliminating the IRS.
Disciplining
other agencies requires a president who is clear from the beginning that the
most
important heritage we have in America is our Constitutional regime of
ordered liberty
under God, and that our citizens must be treated with the respect they
deserve by all
organs of government. Ultimately there is no permanent fix for the problem
of
government agencies becoming ambitious; government will remain limited only
if it is
limited by the ongoing resolve of the people to retain real sovereignty. We
must
continually strive to understand our national principles and the kind of
government that is
consistent with them.

But it is the particular job of the president to be sure that the
executive branch respects
the Constitution. A crucial component of this task is reminding the people
of the nation
that they must be vigilant for the retention of their rights, and for the
retention of the
moral character that those rights presume. We will prevent the imposition of
external
governmental control only by renewing the self-control that makes limited
government
possible.