'Unalienable rights' would be top Keyes priority

Editor's Note: This is the seventh in WND's planned series of one-on-one interviews with each candidate for the office of president. Today Ambassador Alan Keyes says the Constitution already provides for protection for unborn.

Alan Keyes

Ambassador Alan Keyes, who is seeking the GOP nomination for president, says his first priority in office would be to make sure the executive branch of the U.S. government recognizes the unalienable rights of U.S. citizens, as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.

And that means applying to the unborn the protections the Constitution already includes for them.

"My first priority would be to re-establish within the executive branch respect for and protection of the unalienable rights of the unborn children in the womb, to make sure nothing was done by the executive branch of the United States that violated the Constitution of the United States in his regard," he told WND during an exclusive one-on-one interview.

Keyes, who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard in constitutional theory, spent 11 years at the U.S. State Department and was on staff in the U.S. Foreign Service and the National Security Council before becoming Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of state for international organizations in 1985. He served as ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council during the following years.

Keyes told WND the issue isn't even when life begins, as so many have argued.

"The issue is the founding principle of our country. The founding principle of our country is that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by human choice or will, with our unalienable rights," he said. "And that means from the moment of fertilization we are dealing with something that represents the will and the authority of the Creator God and we have no choice but to respect it."

He said he would support a constitutional amendment specifying human life begins at conception but that really isn't necessary.

"It is already clear in the Constitution that the ultimate aim of our government is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," he told WND. "Our posterity, including of course the elemental part of posterity that lies in the womb, is placed by the Constitution on an equal level with ourselves in terms of the claims to liberty.

"So the question is answered right there in the Constitution, and we simply need to respect that answer," he said.

Keyes also equated abortionists with terrorists in referencing his strategy for defeating terrorism.

"I think we have a need right now to understand the nature of the crisis that we're in in terms of the moral cause that lies at its heart. For the threat of terrorism is not just about this group or that. It is about whether we will surrender the basic principle that says that our rights starting with the unalienable right to life of all innocent human beings come from the hand of Almighty God and that therefore whether you are talking about children in the womb or innocent people in the World Trade Center, the abortionists and the terrorists have no right to target innocent human life," he said.

"That's the cause for which we are fighting and it in fact involves the fundamental principle on which our whole way of liberty is based," he said.

Keyes, who also has served as president of Citizens Against Government Waste and is founder of National Taxpayers' Action Day, was the two-time Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

During the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, he also elevated the pro-life and pro-family issues.

He's written "Masters of the Dream: The Strength and Betrayal of Black America" as well as "Our Character, Our Future: Reclaiming America's Moral Destiny."

He also told WND that the immigration debate, the war on terror, the worries over the economy are not individual issues, but symptoms of the larger issue.

"Nobody understands that these … are in fact symptoms of the crisis of the American republic, the question of whether government of, by and for the people is going to survive in the 21st Century," he told WND.

"I think that's being decided in this election," he said.

His solution:

"The answer is to restore the sovereignty of the American people, restore their moral sovereignty by addressing the moral issues like the abandonment of the basic principle that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, … restore our constitutional sovereignty against the assault of abusive judges who have arrogantly taken unto themselves the right to make laws … and deal with the assault on our physical sovereignty in terms of the border and immigration crisis."

He also said the income tax should be abolished.

That, he said, "is the first step toward an economic future that would really witness an amazing explosion of growth and creativity on the part of the American people."

Read the full question-and-answer interview with Alan Keyes.

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Hunter: I will build the fence

Brownback calls for return to 'family values'

Tancredo: Find deterrent or face another 9/11

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