ABORTION/EUTHANASIA

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, 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.

Some people talk about "viability" as a test to determine which offspring have rights that we must respect, and which do not. But might does not make right. And so the mere fact that the individual in the womb is wholly in its mother's physical power and completely dependent upon her for sustenance gives her no right whatsoever with respect to its life, since the mere possession of physical power can never confer such a right. Medical procedures resulting in the death of an unborn child, except as a collateral and unintended consequence of efforts to save the mother's physical life, are therefore impermissible.

As for the "so-called right to suicide" and related practices, such as euthanasia, whatever emotional arguments we make on their behalf, they represent a violation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Our rights, including the right to life, are unalienable. If we kill ourselves or consent to allow another to do so, we both destroy and surrender our life. We act unjustly.

We usurp the authority that belongs solely to the Creator, and deny the basis of our claim to human rights.

TAX CUTS/GOVERNMENT SPENDING

Tyrannical taxation, and excessive government spending and borrowing, are not only threats to our economy -- they erode the resource base of our freedom and our moral responsibility.

The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment and it has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income; only sales, excise and tariff taxes were allowed. We need to return to the Constitution of economic liberty that our Founders intended to be a permanent bulwark of our political liberty.

The income tax in effect makes us vassals to the government -- the politicians decide how much income we can keep. No mere "reform" of this slave tax, such as flattening the rate, can correct its fundamental denial of control over our own money. Only the abolition of the income tax itself will restore the basic American principle that our income is both our own money and our own private business - not the government's.

Replacing the income tax with a national sales tax would rejuvenate independence and responsibility in our citizens. True economic liberty and moral revival go hand in hand.

A national sales tax would also put the American citizen back in control of national fiscal policy. The best way to curtail government spending is to cut taxes, because they can't spend what they don't get. But with a sales tax, we could deny funds to a spendthrift government -- and give ourselves a tax cut -- whenever we make the private choice to alter our spending and saving habits.

But we must also take away the government's credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts. That's why a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, with barriers to both borrowing and spending, is the best way to secure budget discipline.

FAIR TRADE

WELFARE/FAMILY DISINTEGRATION

Most of our expensive government welfare programs aim to deal with problems that are related to the breakdown of moral standards and self-discipline. We will go bankrupt as a nation if we continue trying to pay the ever-increasing costs of our society's moral disintegration.

We must end government programs like the family-destroying welfare system and sex-education courses that encourage promiscuity. These programs actually hasten the moral breakdown.

Our first priority should be restoring the moral and material support for the marriage-based two-parent family. The disintegration of the family is the major contributing factor in poverty, crime, violence, the decline in educational performance, and a host of other expensive social problems.

RELIGION/SCHOOL PRAYER

The doctrine of "separation of church and state" is a misinterpretation of the Constitution. The First Amendment prohibition of established religion aims at forbidding all government sponsored coercion of religious conscience. It does not forbid all religious influence upon politics or society.

The free exercise of religion means nothing if, in connection with the ordinary events and circumstances of life, individuals are forbidden to act upon their religious faith.

As President, I would do everything in my power, through public speeches and persuasion, by proposing legislation, and by careful scrutiny of the candidates for judicial appointments, to turn the tide against constitutional interpretations that undermine religious freedom.

I oppose any efforts to use government power to impose views that contravene religious conscience on matters such as homosexuality and abortion.

RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

I am a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is still in the Constitution of the United States, contrary to what some elites would like us to believe. The right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights.

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.

In our time there have been many folks who don't like to be reminded of all this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the word "people" in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it doesn't mean in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. They say that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse, and instead of putting in "states" they put in "people." And so it refers to a right inherent in the state government.

The gun control agenda is based on the view that ordinary citizens cannot be trusted to use the physical power of arms responsibly. But a people that cannot be trusted with guns cannot be trusted with the much more dangerous powers of self-government.  The gun control agenda is thus an implicit denial of the human capacity for self-government and is tyrannical in principle.

HOMOSEXUAL RIGHTS

In terms of civil rights discrimination, it is wrong to treat sexual orientation like race. Race is a condition beyond the individual's control. Sexual orientation involves behavior, especially in response to passion.

If we equate sexual orientation and race, we are saying that sexual behavior is beyond the individual's control and moral will.

We cannot embrace such an understanding of civil rights without denying the human moral capacity, and with it the fitness of human beings for life in a free society.

The effort to equate homosexual and lesbian relations with legal marriage represents a destructive assault on the heterosexual, marriage-based family.

SEX EDUCATION

Human sexuality is primarily a matter of moral and not physical health. So-called 'health-based' sex education programs have done more harm than good. They too often encourage adolescents to consider sexual activity apart from marriage and family life. Especially in government schools, where teachers feel they must deal with sexual matters without reference to moral authority, they result in a vapid, context-free presentation of sexual mechanics which degrades the meaning of relations between the sexes.

Sex education is, as a rule, the private responsibility of the parents. The government should not usurp this role. Where parents choose to encourage school-based instruction, I strongly support abstinence-based approaches for young adults.

SCHOOL CHOICE

The court-initiated prohibition of school prayer is only the symptom of a deeper problem, the neglect of moral education and character formation. The value-free education offered by the government run schools has all too often proven to be education without value. This is especially true now that Outcome Based Education has been used as an excuse to establish curricular elements that amount to the politically correct brainwashing of our children.

Government money is increasingly used to enforce a low quality, crass form of vocationalism in the School-to-Work scheme, while the same educrats debase traditional academic work with such fads as Whole Language Learning and Fuzzy Math. Parents and local citizens often know better than their educrat masters, but find themselves unable to resist the power of an entrenched and costly monopoly. Education reform is thus a question of liberty and self-government.

I strongly favor school choice approaches that empower parents to send their children to schools that reflect the parents' faith and values. This should include choices in both the public and the independent schools.

We not only need prayer in schools, we need schools that are in the hands of people who pray. Above all, we must break the government monopoly on public education.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

In the 1960's, the civil rights movement sought the assistance of government to enforce the fundamental principle that all men are created equal. But today's civil rights groups have abandoned that principle in favor of preferential treatment for groups defined by race or sex. This is simply wrong. We cannot cure injustice with another injustice.

Moreover, preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country. It is merely another government patronage program that secures money and jobs for the few people who benefit from it, and breeds resentment in the many who do not. It divides us as a people, and draws attention away from the moral and family breakdown that is the chief cause of the despair and misery in which too many of our fellow citizens struggle to live decently.

In 1996, the voters of California adopted a simple and fair prohibition of preferences and repeated the principle of non-discrimination. The Federal government should follow California's lead immediately.

UNITED NATIONS/SOVEREIGNTY

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.