KEYES: HAD AN ABORTION? 9/11 WAS YOUR FAULT

Alan Keyes, at a rally for a GOP Senate candidate in Utah on May 7, as quoted in today's Chicago Sun-Times:

"Now, you think it's a coincidence that on September 11th, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life?" Keyes said in a May 7 speech in Provo, Utah. "We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life -- I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning.

"I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, 'I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?'"

Here's the full speech, from Keyes's RenewAmerica.us site. Incidentally, here's the paragraph that leads up to that quote:

Punishment is often simply the encounter of the consequences of your own wickedness. That's all punishment turns out to be. And so, you find that what is brought against you in order to do harm has at its heart the evil of the harm that you, yourself, are doing.

So the deaths of 3,000 on 9/11 wasn't just a general warning. The dead themselves were guilty of failing to stop abortion, so the dead themselves deserved to die.

Oh, and Keyes continues to refine this argument. Here's what he said Monday, as quoted by the Sun-Times:

"What distinguishes the terrorist from the ordinary warrior, is that the terrorist will consciously target innocent human life. What is done in the course of an abortion? ... Someone consciously targets innocent human life.

"As I often point out to folks, the evil is the same. And that means, quite frankly, in fighting the war against terror, as I have often put it to audiences, the evil that we fight is but the shadow of the evil that we do."

9/11 = abortion.

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But, entertainingly, Keyes has also managed to shoot himself in the foot. He said something that's certain to alienate his most hardcore supporters: He came out in favor of reparations for slavery (and, for good measure, it's a flip-flop).

On another issue, Keyes on Monday said he supported reparations for descendants of slaves -- an apparent switch in his position.

Keyes suggested descendants of slaves should be exempt from paying federal income taxes. But in a March 27, 2002, transcript of his show "Making Sense," Keyes -- who wants to abolish the federal income tax for everyone -- suggested that reparations were an insult.

"You want to tell me that what they suffered can actually be repaired with money?" Keyes asked at the time.

Keyes, through a spokesman, said late Monday he does not support reparations if other people's money is used. "If you couldn't get the income tax abolished totally, that [exemption for slave descendants] is incremental progress," spokesman Bill Pascoe said.

You know, I love the conservatives. I really do.

Conservatives can complain all they want about left-wing naivete, but the most naive lefty doesn't hold a candle to the large percentage of right-wingers who make it abundantly clear on a regular basis that their position on economics is: Imagine there's no taxes. Imagine that there's no government. Imagine that elves and fairies build the roads and teach in the schools and drive patrol cars through high-crime neighborhoods and fight fires and wars.

What exactly is Keyes's position on suspending the income tax? Does he think anything should replace it? Is he proposing that we have no government whatsoever? Come on, Alan, tell us your economic vision.

And if, like many haters of the income tax, Keyes believes that it should be replaced by a national sales tax, is that what he wants descendants of slaves to pay now, while the rest of us continue to pay income tax? Given the fact that African-Americans are, on average, less wealthy than whites, they'd almost certainly pay a higher percentage of their income under a national sales tax than whites would (because a greater percentage of their income goes to paying for essentials). Is that what Keyes means by "reparations" -- a higher rate of tax than the rest of us pay?