Family Research Council President Outlines Views at IOP

Calling for the United States to incorporate its founding values in its diplomacy, Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, laid out his conservative view of American foreign policy at the Institute of Politics' Arco Forum last night.

Criticizing Washington's refusal to punish China for its record of human rights violations, he said trade has supplanted liberty as America's paramount value.

Bauer recalled the Chinese protesters who brandished copies of the Declaration of Independence during the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989.

"Washington should be at least as committed to defending American values as those students were," he said.

Bauer claimed America's founding ideals ought to be defended abroad because they apply to all human beings.

"The founders didn't say all Americans are created equal, they didn't say all colonists are created equal.... It was a moral vision meant to apply to the whole world," he said.

Aside from lamenting that business exports have replaced ideological exports, Bauer stated his support for several other policy objectives.

He supported NATO expansion, increasingly military spending and greater American aid to Israel as the key to stability in the Middle East.

Before concluding, Bauer returned to speaking of trade with China. Dismissing the argument that economic activity will change China, he said trade with China has transformed the U.S. into a "moneybags democracy."

"American foreign policy and domestic policy are morally inseparable," he said. "What we do abroad will always reveal what we are at home."

Before the speech, Bill Kristol, editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard, introduced Bauer as "the most formidable conservative in Washington." However, Bauer found his conservative domestic theories under attack from listeners.

Audience members challenged, Bauer for defending Chinese Christians' rights while opposing legislation for homosexual marriage.

One man alleged that Bauer "favors human rights for people that [he] agrees with and tends to like and discards them for people that [he] doesn't like."

Bauer, however, was unapologetic in his response.

Despite professing to oppose only the political agenda of the gay rights movement and not gay people themselves, Bauer labeled homosexuality "a destructive lifestyle."

Bauer's next stop may be in New Hampshire in preparation of the Republican presidential primary. Asked whether he was considering seeking the party's nomination in 2000, he replied that he might.

"I grew weary of trying to put my words in the mouths of people that really didn't believe them," Bauer said.