The official positions of the Constitution Party are stated in its platform. Articles and transcripts in this newsroom contain the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily to be construed as representing the official positions of the Constitution Party.

by Howard Phillips
Constitution Party 2000 Presidential Nominee

Not all of you know Otto Scott, but one of the reasons I am glad he is up here is that he is the real founder of this party — this was all his idea. Otto, stand up and take a bow.

I thank you all. I thank those with whom each of us, this day or that, have agreed or disagreed on one subject or another. I was asked by several journalists "what are your differences with Herb Titus?", "what are your differences with Washington State?", and I replied, invariably, "within this room there are no real differences. Our differences are with the people who gather under the label of the elephant and the donkey — that’s where our differences are."

And, I hope my friends from Washington and other delegations who did not always agree with me on everything this week, will know of my profound respect for them and my appreciation for the sincerity of their purpose and their devotion to the cause.

A TREMENDOUS CONVENTION TEAM

I want to thank the people who did so much to make this convention successful: Ed Frami, who did just a tremendous job as Chairman of the Platform Committee and head of the convention; Dan Eby, the Chairman of the Rules Committee; and Jim Clymer, who guided us through some worrisome shoals as Chairman of the Credentials Committee and did so with fairness and dispatch. I want to thank Sandi Boehr and her family, and Cedric, her husband, for putting together the program for this convention. I want to reiterate the admiration that Bill Shearer expressed for the magnificent work of our National Secretary, Debbie Hopper, and her entire Missouri delegation.

BILL SHEARER — THE GREAT HELMSMAN

And I want to especially thank the gentleman on my right, Bill Shearer. We are going to have a chance to thank him in much greater detail tomorrow. I hope every one of you will come to our Andrew Jackson Champion of Liberty Award luncheon after church tomorrow in this hotel when we will honor a very great man, William K. Shearer.

Bill, I am grateful to you for your outstanding, fair-minded, discerning and effective leadership of our party in years leading up to this great convention. Your friendship, trust, loyalty, and support have been indispensable to the progress we have made.

"NO DEBT" POLICY EMBRACED

To Ted Adams, our first National Chairman, who, by reason of family illness is absent, I thank God for your willingness, Ted, in 1992 to step forward to help chart our course. Your complete repudiation of debt, both in the internal policies which we practice and the public policies which we advocate, has been consistent and correct. During this campaign we will endeavor faithfully to follow your wise guidance.

THIS IS NOT A GAME

Fellow delegates, I am grateful for your vote of confidence in me, and your willingness to entrust to me responsibility for leading our party during the crucial campaign for the year 2000. This is not a game. This is a campaign to rescue America from its downward slide. I am in it to stay and I am in it to win.

Dear friends — from Alaska to Florida, from New Hampshire to California, from Michigan to Mississippi, and everything in between, I am profoundly grateful for your loyalty, your encouragement, your support, and, above all, your commitment to the cause.

I am thankful to my wife, Peggy, and to each of my children — Douglas, Amanda, Brad, Jennifer, Alexandra, and Samuel — for the unstinting, uncomplaining, support and assistance they have given me. Stand up, guys.

My friends, I don’t want to beat around the Bush, I don’t want to Gore you to tears — I accept your nomination, and I thank you for choosing the eloquent, courageous, Constitutional advocate Joe Sobran, to be my national running mate, with Dr. Curt Frazier becoming our Vice Presidential standard-bearer in Virginia.

CONSTITUTION PARTY IS THE HEIR TO AMERICA’S FOUNDERS

And now I say to you and to every American who hears our message: Welcome to the Constitution Party.

We are the party of George Washington, of Thomas Jefferson, of John Adams and James Madison — of George Mason and of Patrick Henry. We are the only party which offers the American people the opportunity in the year 2000 to reaffirm the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the strictures of the Constitution of the United States. We are the party to which every citizen who knows and appreciates America’s heritage of Christian liberty should come.

YOU ARE REQUESTED TO JOIN US

Our doors are open and everyone is encouraged to share in advancing the cause to which we have committed ourselves. We cordially invite every American within the sound of my voice to consider our cause, to join our ranks, and to embrace our candidacies. Men and women, young and old, Americans of diverse faiths and backgrounds, we need your help, and we ask for it prayerfully and fervently.

WE WILL BE THERE IN NOVEMBER, 2000

My friends, I know that each of you joins me in extending a cordial invitation and warm welcome to the supporters of Senator Bob Smith, publisher Steve Forbes, columnist Pat Buchanan, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, and former Vice President Dan Quayle.

Let me say that I am especially grateful to Senator Bob Smith for the extraordinarily generous letter which he sent to this convention encouraging support for my selection to be your nominee. It was more than I could have asked for or hoped for, and the Senator’s graciousness in transmitting it is something which I will always appreciate. It was a wonderful gesture on his part and I look forward to thanking him personally for it.

PHILLIPS MAY BE "THE LAST MAN STANDING"

A year from now, all of those grass-roots Republican activists — whether they are supporting Smith or Buchanan or Bauer or Keyes, or whoever, as well as supporters of any other pro-family candidates there may be — will be looking for a political home and we will enthusiastically make room for them.

PUT PRINCIPLE BEFORE PARTY

I urge grass-roots conservatives to put principle before party, and to be loyal to their principles, and therefore reject the party of the pachyderms, which has broken its promises and trampled the principles which attracted many to join it in the first place.

I urge you to come home to the party of the Constitution.

MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA

In his first inaugural address on April 30, 1789, George Washington said "It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose Providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge."

Washington continued, "In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and endure the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States."

WE STRIVE TO BE INSTRUMENTS OF HIS WILL

My prayer is that Almighty God will bless our launch of this campaign just as He blessed the inauguration of the Presidency of George Washington so that we may, indeed, be instruments of His will at the end of the 20th Century, just as was George Washington at the end of the 18th Century.

AMERICA HAS FORGOTTEN GOD AND IS ON THE WRONG TRACK

In that same first inaugural address, President Washington asserted that "There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself has ordained."

My fellow Americans, our country has walked far from those eternal rules of order and right ordained by God.

GOP LOYALISTS CLAIM CONSERVATIVES HAVE "WON"

There are those who say that conservatives have won. But how can we count anything a victory while our government continues to authorize, and, indeed, in many cases, to subsidize, the slaughter of more than one-and-a-half million innocent children each year.

GOP’S "COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES" FAVOR ABORTION, BUT NOT IN ALL CASES

The Democrats say that every unborn child is a candidate for the butcher’s knife. The Republicans manifest their "compassionate conservatism" by saying that only the children they call "exceptions" shall be sliced, diced, burned, and beheaded.

WAS HITLER OR STALIN THE "LESSER OF TWO EVILS"?

This unconscionable Republican argument suggests in effect that Adolph Hitler was the lesser of two evils because he made "exceptions" to his slaughter of innocents, while Joseph Stalin did not.

ABORTION MUST BE AND CAN BE ENDED — IF WE WIN, IT SHALL BE ENDED

Abortion in America must be ended. And if God chooses to bring our principles, our platform, and our plan of action, and our candidates to office, we will strive to be sensitive to His will and to faithfully do it. And that means that, on Day One, as President of the United States, I will officially acknowledge the legal personhood of the unborn child, and appoint — by recess appointment, if necessary — new United States Attorneys who will make it their top priority to work with state and local officials in prosecuting and closing down every abortuary within their jurisdictions.

KILLING OF THE INNOCENT, YOUNG OR OLD, IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

In plain English, the Constitution of the United States stipulates that "No person shall...be deprived of life...without due process of law". Every one of us is a living, human person, endowed by Almighty God with an immortal soul, from the moment of fertilization until the moment of death. That is why we vigorously oppose euthanasia as well as abortion.

We will end government-approved abortion and stop subsidies to organizations which promote abortion. We will do this — not simply because this course is required by our platform, but more significantly because it is required by the laws of God and the Constitution of the United States.

THE ISSUE IS SOVEREIGNTY

We are the party which understands that the question of sovereignty is the basic issue to be resolved. Law is always the will of the Sovereign.

In our platform we recognize that the God Almighty is not only our Creator, our Lord, and our Savior — He is also our Sovereign.

REPUBLICANS PREFER CAESAR TO CHRIST

The Republicans and Democrats reject this premise and wrongly assert that civil government is the ultimate source of authority on questions of moral truth — whether the issue is abortion, quotas, culture, homosexuality, or hate crimes. For them the state is sovereign.

Libertarians have a different view. They enshrine human reason above God, who in truth and in fact, made this world and everything in it.

NEW WORLD ORDER THREATENS OUR SOVEREIGNTY UNDER GOD

It is to defend the sovereignty of God that we oppose the surrender of tax dollars and policy control to the institutions of the New World Order.

CONSTITUTION PARTY HAS PLANS, NOT JUST OPINIONS

Ours is not only a party which is serious about the principles we defend and the policies we proclaim. More important, the Constitution Party has a plan of action to put our Federal republic back on the right track.

CUT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOWN TO CONSTITUTIONAL SIZE

Our simple, straightforward intention is to cut the Federal government down to Constitutional size, and to restore the separation of powers, the checks and balances, and the systems of accountability postulated by the Framers.

MEDIA DEFAMATION MUST BE PENALIZED

We support the First Amendment in all of its ramifications. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances".

President Jefferson, a firm advocate of press freedom, also recognized the need to rein in bias and bigotry, libel and defamation.

In his second inaugural, Jefferson observed that "During the discourse of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several states against falsehood and defamation." My friends, we have the right to defend our reputations against malicious libel, defamation, and slander — and we shall.

JOHN ADAMS FORESAW DANGERS OF CLINTON’S CHINA CORRUPTION

Concerning another dimension of our rights of speech, assembly, and religion, John Adams asserted: "If...suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations." Hmmm.

What could more appropriately describe the events of the last few years than the warning of John Adams two centuries ago?

RED CHINA HAS BOUGHT GOP SUPPORT IN CONGRESS

Who can doubt that Red China has purchased the policies of the Clinton administration, and influenced the pro-Red China decisions of many members of Congress — Republican and Democrat alike — whose contributors profit at the expense of our national interest from special business arrangements with the totalitarian regime in Peiping.

MFN AND PANAMA SURRENDERED TO RED CHINA BY BIPARTISAN LEADERSHIP IN CONGRESS

They are the ones responsible for growing Red Chinese influence at the isthmus of Panama, for the transfer of technology to the Red Chinese military, and the turnover of $60 billion per year in hard currency to the Peoples Liberation Army of China as a result of the Most-Favored-Nation status for which the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in the Congress of the United States have voted.

INTERVENTION IN THE POLITICS OF OTHER NATIONS IS WRONG

How can Republicans, with a clear conscience, protest Chinese manipulation of our political process at the same time they commit Federal funds through the misnamed National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute — Those are your tax dollars, my friends — to intervene in the internal affairs and political processes of other nations, as they now do under the direction of Republican Senator John McCain, with the full support of the CFR, Trilateralist, Bildeberger two-party establishment.

ANTI-CHRISTIANITY IS THE ESTABLISHED RELIGION OF CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

How ironic is it that, even as the First Amendment is incorrectly cited to justify restrictions on the free exercise of religion, the bipartisan Washington political establishment ignores the prohibition on Congress funding any establishment of religion, looking the other way as Congress doles out scores of billions of dollars annually to organizations whose religion is abortion, whose religion is sodomy, whose religion is environmentalism, whose religion is humanism, whose religion is the overthrow of Western Christian civilization.

We will end this unconstitutional use of our tax dollars. We will achieve reform — not by funding the Christians, but by defunding the anti-Christians.

FEDERAL FUNDING OF CHURCH GROUPS TO PROVIDE SERVICES IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

We reject the dangerous argument promoted by George Bush and others that Christian organizations should surrender their independence and transfer their allegiance, to place them not under God, but under government, for a mess of political pottage.

CHRISTIANITY IS THE BASIS OF OUR LAW SYSTEM

The Supreme Court of the United States said, in its decision concerning the Church of the Holy Trinity, "Christianity is, and always has been, a part of the common law...not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts; but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men..."

LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE MUST BE RESPECTED

As a man of Jewish heritage and Christian faith, I have felt the sting of bigotry, the pain of ignorance and hatred, and I believe strongly that we must respect the rights of men and women with different theological perspectives.

Each of us today must reassert the principle that our rights are not a license bestowed by the state, but a gift from Almighty God which no civil authority can rightly disregard.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights, promulgated on June 12, 1776, makes clear "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other."

SECOND AMENDMENT HAS EQUAL STANDING

It is not only the First Amendment which we hold in esteem, but the Second Amendment as well. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution of the United States which authorizes the Congress to either regulate or restrict your right, and my right, to keep and bear arms, and when we assume office, all such restrictions will be declared null and void because they are in conflict with the plain text of the Constitution.

FEC "REFORMS" HAVE CORRUPTED THE POLITICAL PROCESS

President John Adams said "We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the quality of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections."

My friends, there is such an infection — it is called the Federal Election Commission — which restricts and represses the right of a free people to replace the one-party politicians who govern them and fire their hand-picked appointees who serve on that Commission.

We will abolish the Federal Election Commission. We will eliminate all ceilings on individual contributions. We will require full and immediate disclosure of campaign contributions.

CONCENTRATION OF FINANCIAL POWER IN NATIONAL PARTY POWER STRUCTURES MUST BE ENDED

In doing this, we will reduce the power of the national Republican and Democrat party machineries which have been a major factor in corrupting the independence and integrity of every Senator and Congressman who lacks the personal fortune or access to resources to survive in office without the blessing of those party hierarchs to whom our Federal legislators have too often surrendered independent judgment.

YOUR TAXES WRONGLY SUBSIDIZE THEIR CAMPAIGNS

We will also eliminate the corrupt use of your tax dollars by the incumbent political establishment to send more than $100 million every four years to the Republicans and the Democrats for their primaries, their conventions, and their general election campaigns. And this year, they are going to be sending $12.6 million for the general election to "mini-me", Ross Perot, and another $2.6 million for their convention — that is illicit; that is improper.

STOP, THIEF!

I have two words to say about this grave problem, about this conscription of us to keep the two established political parties in power, using our money to do it, and those two words are, very simply: Stop, thief.

The purpose of an election is to enable the American people to change drivers and change directions if they so wish. But the bipartisan schemers who control the Federal establishment entrench themselves in power by using the people’s money to pay for their perpetuation in office, and to exclude strong challenges from those who are neither millionaires nor media moguls.

FEC RULES STRENGTHEN THE LEFT-WING MEDIA

Abolishing the Federal Election Commission will undercut the monopoly power of the corporate media over the communication of ideas.

WHY NOT EQUAL RIGHTS FOR AMERICANS WHO DON’T CONTROL TV NETWORKS AND NEWSPAPERS?

So long as the networks and the newspapers are not required to file with the Federal Election Commission and place limits on their free expression, so should every other American enjoy the same rights, including those Americans such as we who are engaged in a conversation with the electorate to win their support for a redirection in the course of civil government. These free-speech principles are all part of the First Amendment and the promises made to us therein.

COMPUTER VOTE FRAUD MUST GIVE WAY TO LOCAL CONTROL OF ELECTIONS

And is it not also the case that we have lost control of our elections in other ways, with vote-counting having been removed from the hands of people who live in the precincts where the votes are cast, and instead, put at the mercy of voting machines and computers which can be, and have been, corruptly manipulated by those who control them?

WE WILL CLOSE DOWN THE ESTABLISHMENT’S "MINISTRIES OF TRUTH"

We will get the Federal government out of the media business, in which it has no Constitutional right to operate. There will be no paid "public service" propaganda on our nation’s television screens and radio broadcasts from the various departments and agencies of the Federal government — whether it’s Health and Human Services or the Centers for Disease Control or the National Endowment for the Arts or the Department of Defense — they have no right to do that.

CHRISTIANS SHOULD REJECT THE GOVERNMENT’S DOLLAR

We will close down subsidies to Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, the Legal Services Corporation, the National Endowment for the Arts, or even a putatively Christian group which seeks government subsidies for its good works. Again, this is where Mr. Bush is wrong. The ancient truism that "he who pays the piper calls the tune" is a fact of life — when Christians take the government dollar, over time they learn to sing the government song.

ACCOUNTABILITY REQUIRES THAT CONGRESS NOT SURRENDER LEGISLATING AUTHORITY

We will give new life to the Constitutional stipulation that all legislative power shall be vested in a Congress of the United States. A Congress which is accountable to the people of the several states who are themselves accountable to their Creator to be the stewards of his Sovereignty.

OUT NOW!

As faithful stewards, it is our duty to immediately withdraw the United States from all institutions which challenge and undermine the American system of sovereignty and accountability — and that includes the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the Asian Development Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — and, yes, the Federal Reserve.

THE FED IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR "LEGALIZED" PLUNDER

Just in case some of you may not have watched closely, it ain’t Federal, and it has no reserves. And, you know what? In the 86 years since the Fed was created in 1913, our people, our country have suffered under inflation of more than 1,000%, whereas, in the 126 years before the Fed was established, from 1787 to 1913, America had cumulative inflation of less than 17%. They have stolen more than 975% or your savings, your assets, your earnings, and it must stop.

As we return to a system of Constitutional money, no longer will behind-the-scenes bankers and plutocrats be able to plunder your pension, steal your savings, or devalue your dollars.

THE FEDERAL BUDGET IS NOT BALANCED

My friends, in the 1960s the noted economist, Milton Friedman, observed that it would be better to have a $200 billion in deficit than a $2 trillion budget in balance. Federal spending was less than $100 billion when John F. Kennedy took office, $200 billion in Richard Nixon’s first year, $600 billion when Ronald Reagan took the oath, $1.2 trillion — twice that amount — when Reagan passed the Presidency to George Bush, and, today, Republicans in Congress and Democrats in the White House have enacted a $2 trillion budget to take effect soon after the turn of the century.

$852 BILLION STOLEN FROM SOCIAL SECURITY BY CONGRESSIONAL GOP AND DEM

They falsely tell us that they have achieved a "balanced budget", but they forget to mention the huge deficit under which we operate. And they fail to disclose that even their more limited definition of a budget in balance is undermined by the harsh reality that Democrats and Republicans in a bipartisan conspiracy have stolen more than $852 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund and spent it as general revenues — their pet projects, not the retirement of the people who invested in the program.

PROTECTION AND PRIVATIZATION

We will insist that that money be restored to the Social Security Trust Fund so that Americans who have been required to pay taxes into that system will get back every penny to which they are entitled — and we will do this even as we move toward the complete privatization of the Social Security system so that individual Americans may take back from the bureaucrats and politicians control of their own retirement planning as befits the free citizens of a free society.

NO DIRECT FEDERAL TAXATION ON CITIZENS OF THE SEVERAL STATES

Regarding other taxes, we agree with the Framers that tariffs for revenue are a far superior means for sustaining the legitimate objects of the Federal government than direct Federal taxes on income, estates, capital gains, gifts, and business activity. Unfair, unfair Federal taxation oppresses the American people and limits the growth of our family economies. After all, we are the citizens of the several states in which we reside. The Framers knew that state citizenship precluded direct Federal taxation.

ABOLISH THE IRS

In his second inaugural address on March 4, 1805, Jefferson said to his fellow citizens "You best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their intrusion had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successfully every article of property and produce."

Like Jefferson, it is our intention to suppress unnecessary offices, to abolish useless establishments, to avoid unnecessary expenses, and, in the process, to discontinue all, all, all internal taxes imposed by the Federal government.

TARIFFS ON FOREIGNERS SHOULD REPLACE TAXES ON AMERICANS

Relying on excises, imposts, and duties, as prevailed during most of the 19th Century, we can echo the thoughts of President Jefferson, who said "The...revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic consumption [tariffs] being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens."

Jefferson went on, "It may be the pleasure and pride of the American to ask ‘what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a tax gatherer of the United States?’" May that personal liberty and respect for private property rights prevail once again. It will prevail if we can persuade the American people to invest their confidence and their votes in our candidacy.

RETURN TO ORIGINAL PLAN FOR SECURING FEDERAL REVENUES

I agree with Thomas Jefferson, and, as President, I pledge to you that I will veto all further funds for the Internal Revenue Service. I will work to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, and I will strive to persuade Congress that there should be no direct taxation whatsoever by the Federal government on the American people, with revenues instead to be derived by excises, imposts, duties and apportionment among the states.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PEOPLE AND THEIR SOVEREIGN WILL BE RESTORED

Because Article I of the Constitution makes clear that "All legislative Powers...shall be vested in a Congress of the United States", we shall strip legislative authority away from Federally funded advocacy groups, from Federal regulatory agencies, from the Federal judiciary, from the Federal bureaucracy, from the Federal Reserve, and from all the institutions of the New World Order. None of them, not one of them, will any longer be permitted to assign our tax dollars or set policies governing our affairs. We will withdraw from all of those unconstitutional entities.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS WILL BE REPEALED, NO WAR WITHOUT A CONGRESSIONAL DECLARATION

When the nominees of the Constitution Party take office, there will be no legislation by Executive Order, there will be no more undeclared wars — there will be no wars at all except for the purpose of defending our own country. And there will be no commitment of forces without the prior authorization of the Congress of the United States.

NO MORE AMERICAN MERCENARIES FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER

And, when our troops do go to war, they will serve under no foreign commander and be accountable to no foreign authority. Their line of command will flow directly and exclusively from the President of the United States as he fulfills his duty to safeguard civilian control of the military, domestic civilian control of the military.

And make no mistake, my friends, as your President, I will recognize and act upon the duty of the commander-in-chief to protect the nation from all enemies, domestic and foreign.

SDI WILL BE DEPLOYED

I will immediately extricate the United States from arms control treaties which, for more than two decades, have been the phony pretext for the nondeployment of a strategic defense.

USA WILL BE IN PANAMA, RED CHINA WILL BE OUT

I will act to restore an appropriate U.S. military presence at the isthmus of Panama and to remove the burgeoning influence of Communist China which, thanks to the indolence and indifference of the Congress and the conniving of President Clinton, now controls ports at both ends of the canal and has gained a supposed right to acquire significant military facilities which we have gratuitously abandoned.

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC WILL BE DEFENDED — "ONE WORLD" IMPERIALISM WILL BE REJECTED

We will adhere to the great principle of John Quincy Adams that our task is to be the advocate for liberty everywhere, but the defender of ours alone.

If individual Americans wish to risk their own lives to fight other nation’s wars, they are free to do so in the future as they have been in the past, but they will not any longer be in a position to conscript or assign our children for their parochial purposes.

UNCLE SAM WILL NO LONGER ROB YOU TO SUBSIDIZE POLITICALLY PREFERRED CAUSES

Similarly, if there are charitable causes at home or abroad about which they care deeply, we encourage them to draw on their own resources to provide assistance.

WE WILL ACT TO DOUBLE YOUR FAMILY INCOME

As we abolish domestic and foreign welfare, the wealth and well-being of every working American family will be expanded by the complete elimination of the income tax and other direct Federal taxes. In many cases, household income will more than double as a result of our intention to eliminate all financial demands by the Federal government on individual American citizens and their families.

Y2K MAY BE USED TO UNDERMINE OUR LIBERTY

Ladies and gentlemen, the road before us is difficult and uncertain. Our country will face new challenges in the year 2000. It is almost beyond question that the millennium bug crisis will have an adverse effect on the American economy and will, at least in some areas, result in the loss of electrical power, the danger of widespread disease, and diminished access to the necessities of life for those who have not prepared themselves.

Indeed, there is a danger that power-seeking politicians, including the incumbent President, may exploit this looming crisis to aggrandize their authority and to perpetuate themselves in power.

WE WILL RESIST TYRANNY

The Constitution Party of the United States is ready to oppose any usurpation and to resist all tyranny on the cusp of the 21st Century, just as our Founders did toward the end of the 18th Century.

Before closing, I would be remiss if I failed to address a central question in this campaign and that is, whether a vote for Howard Phillips and Joe Sobran is a wasted vote, a vote which gives aid and comfort to the ideological adversaries of most Americans.

VOTES NOT INVESTED ARE VOTES WASTED

I say first of all that a vote for Phillips and Sobran is an invested vote, not a wasted vote.

AMERICA’S DECLINE IS YOUR FAULT IF YOU FAIL TO VOTE FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE

As citizens, our votes are the currency of our virtue. If we stand for what you believe, my fellow Americans, and you, then, fail to vote for what you believe to be right and what you know to be necessary, then you can no longer blame the professional politicians, the well-heeled lobbyists, or the Left-wing media for a policy outcome which you fervently oppose.

GOP CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS HAVE BEEN CLINTON COLLABORATORS

It’s not just Bill Clinton and Al Gore who have acted to vastly expand taxes and spending by the Federal government.

It is not only Bill Clinton and Al Gore who have supported billions of dollars in funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups.

It is not only Clinton and Gore who have supported the most recent billion dollar bailout of the U.N. and the $17.9 billion bailout of the IMF.

It’s not just Clinton and Gore who have embraced the unconstitutional war in Kosovo.

It is not just Clinton and Gore who have tried to scrap the Second Amendment.

It is not just Clinton and Gore who have neglected to keep America in Panama and to get Red China out.

It is not just Clinton and Gore who pushed to get us into NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.

It is not just Clinton and Gore who have supported the continuation of the National Endowment for the Arts and Legal Services Corporation.

It is not just Clinton and Gore who favored a rigged impeachment trial to prevent the conviction of Bill Clinton on charges of impeachment.

It is not just Clinton and Gore who have supported the extension of Most-Favored-Nation status for Communist China — a regime, by the way, which has targeted its missiles on our people and our territory, as well as on our military installations. GOP SUPPORTS PRO-ABORTION SUPREME COURT JUSTICES

It is not just Clinton and Gore who voted to confirm pro-abortion Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. They were all confirmed with the support of the overwhelming majority of Republican members of the U.S. Senate.

DOLE AND LOTT, GINGRICH AND HASTERT HAVE DELIVERED THE LIBERAL AGENDA

No, my friends, it was not just Clinton and Gore — it was also Newt Gingrich, and Bob Dole, and Trent Lott, and Dennis Hastert, and all of the others who defined the Republican agenda on Capitol Hill from Election Day of 1994 until the present time — five years later.

IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE --- OF DIRECTION

If you favor a continuation of the ongoing bipartisan sell-out of our national interests, then vote for George Bush, or vote for Al Gore.

There is no difference in the direction they would lead us, only a disagreement about the details. But, if you want a real change of direction, you must never forget that to achieve victory, first you must seek it.

THEY DON’T GET BETTER ONCE ELECTED

If, during the campaign season, you fail to require of those who are seeking your support, commitments to which they will bind themselves once in office, those politicians will never discover your principles or embrace your proposals after they have ceased to be dependent on you for support.

HELP US PUT AMERICA BACK ON THE RIGHT TRACK

In politics, your vote indicates who you are and what you believe. If you believe there is no hope for America, that the slippery slope on which we are now sliding is irreversible and that the best you can do is delay the day of total defeat by supporting Republicans, who will lose as slowly as possible, then vote for George Bush.

But, if you believe as I do, that God is merciful and that he will listen to our prayers, and that, if we turn from our wicked ways, he will heal our land, then the only sound course for you is to invest your vote, your time, and your money in the only Presidential ticket committed to the proposition that, it is not only our duty to oppose evil, but that, by God’s grace, we shall succeed in overcoming it.

TO ACHIEVE VICTORY, FIRST YOU MUST SEEK IT

We must reject the politics of preemptive concession and the presumed inevitability of failure which lies at the heart of the lesser of two evil strategies. Our enemies want you to be discouraged. They want you to feel defeated. They want you to give up. They forget that God is in His heaven, and those who are on His side will share in the ultimate victory.

I have no idea how many votes we will receive in November, 2000. But, even if the only vote I get were my own (of course I would be disappointed if I didn’t get Joe’s, not to mention some others here), I would, nonetheless, be confident of the rightness of our cause and the need to pursue it with every resource at our command.

THE BIBLE AND THE CONSTITUTION ARE OUR FOUNDATION

Without the Constitution Party, the principles of America’s Founders would be absent in political dialogue for the year 2000 campaign. My friends, ideas which are unexpressed are ideas which are lost to history. The American idea is the greatest political idea in the history of the world, with a system of God-given rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. We unequivocally defend those rights. We do have a litmus test — that litmus test is the Constitution of the United States and the Biblical foundations of Western civilization.

WE ARE THE PARTY OF AMERICA’S FOUNDING AND AMERICA’S FUTURE As best I can, I will seek to advance our cause and to encourage every American to learn anew America’s heritage, to consider the fact that our party is, indeed, the party of America’s future, as well as of its founding, and to agree that Joe Sobran and I, as candidates, merit your consideration and deserve your vote.

PRAY FOR US

My friends, I am profoundly grateful for your nomination and for the confidence you have reposed in me. Now I ask you, as I ask every American, for your vote, for your help, and especially for your prayers as we move forward from this place, rejecting the failed Republican strategy of retreat, defeat, sell-out, and surrender, as we raise once again the banner of truth, demanding justice, expecting victory, and marching ahead as members of Gideon’s army, faithful to our duty knowing that God’s will shall be done on earth as it is Heaven. I thank you.

Mr. Chairman, let me mention something. Thom Holmes came up to me shortly before I began speaking, and he advised me that Monday, September 6, the day we complete our deliberations in St. Louis is the same date on which the Pilgrims arrived some years ago, in 1620, aboard the Mayflower, having set sail from England for the New World. As we set sail with this Presidential campaign on September 6, may God grant us a safe and successful journey. Thank you.