Alan Keyes: Black Nationalist

By Dylan Hales

Over at www.thirdpartywatch.com there has been an awful lot of talk lately about Alan Keyes being the Constitution Party candidate for President of the United States. This is obviously a terrible idea. While the CP is not an explicitly paleoconservative party, its platform is explicitly decentralist and leaves no room for Strauss following, neoconservative maniacs like Keyes. For this reason there have been many paleos, third party activist and diehard Constitution Party members who are upset at the mere notion of Keyes being batted around as their next candidate for the highest office in the land.

All of this is understandable and Keyes, as I said, is a terrible candidate. That Keyes has been able to use his relative social conservatism as a tool to wedge his way into another nomination he doesn't deserve is sad. His rabid interventionism and Lincoln worship being ignored by some traditionalists who are more concerned with unborn children than Iraqi toddlers is equally disturbing.

Still there is another angle to all of this that has not been explored...you see, by the standards of many of these traditionalist conservatives Alan Keyes is a black nationalist!

No, I do not actually believe that Keyes is Marcus Garvey incarnate. But back in 2004 Alan Keyes ran against Barack Obama for Obama's Illinois Senate seat, and he had some interesting things to say at the time. While the former Ambassador did not favor the LBJ style "bribe and buyoff" big government welfare policies of Obama (policies designed and implemented by liberals that fear poor blacks), he did accuse Obama of being a self loathing black man who advocated black genocide via his support for abortion.

While that in and of itself is a debatable and interesting point, it may not prove any "nationalist" agenda. It does however show that Keyes was willing run to the multicultural left of a supposed multicultural icon...and then Keyes came out in favor of reparations for slavery.

You see Alan Keyes wants to exempt the descendants of slaves from federal income taxes for a few generations. This is of course a radical proposal, that in some ways is significantly more radical than arguments and proposals put forth by Randall Robinson and others that have made careers pushing the reparations line. While this was a reversal from Keyes previous position, it was also a key platform position in his Senate race with Obama, and yet another place where he race baited Obama and challenged his bona fides as the true "black" candidate.

For the record I think Keyes is a professional campaigner and I doubt very much that his reparations stance was anything more than a backdoor attempt to chip away at the income tax. But when Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton use similar tactics they are accused of race baiting and written off regardless of what they are selling. Why the inconsistent attitude regarding Keyes?

The truth is that the much maligned Al Sharpton would be a better Constitution Party candidate than Keyes. The Reverand had the good sense to oppose the War in Iraq and actually understands how the Constitution works (Sharpton was the only candidate in recent history in either party proposing Constitutional Amendments to push certain policy initiatives that would not be legal under the current framework). Keyes is a warmongering fool that believes in expansive executive powers, torture warrants and regards the Declaration of Independence as our principle founding document. At a time like this I'd take the National Action Network over the Neocons any day.

Addendum:

Below is a link on Keyes position on reparations

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5747800/

It is also worth noting that Obama was the racial moderate in both of his campaigns for federal office. After all, Obama was never a Black Panther and he has never supported reparations.