[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
     AMERICA MUST RETURN TO FUNDAMENTAL MORAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, we have been talking about this 
crime bill now for a long, long time. Now we are going to be here 
through Saturday and maybe into next week. I think the American people 
are very concerned about crime. I think everybody is.
  However, Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you a story. Last night I bought 
a movie that I had seen when I was a boy. It starred a guy named Joel 
McCrea. He was a western star.
  The name of the movie was called ``Stars In My Crown.'' It is a story 
about a western minister who came back from the Civil War, and he 
started preaching in this small western town. It is one of the best 
movies I have ever seen.
  It had a very strong moral story to it. In one scene in the movie, he 
goes into a schoolhouse at the beginning of the school year and he 
talks to a bunch of schoolchildren about studying and about being a 
good, moral person, and he did a little prayer in the school.
  One of the problems that I have with the crime bill and legislation 
we pass around here is that it is a solution that is peripheral in 
nature. It is not going to solve the problem. We are not going to solve 
crime in America by passing this crime bill.
  We are not going to solve crime in America by spending $9 billion 
more for social programs or by doing away with people's rights to have 
weapons. We are not going to solve the problems in America until we 
start changing the moral attitude of this country.
  This country has lost its moral underpinnings. We do not have prayer 
in school anymore. Kids do not have any real moral guidance. They grow 
up with a steady diet of pornography and all kinds of things we would 
not accept when we were kids. We wonder why crime has been on the 
increase.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that we ought to be preaching from the 
well of the House. I am the last person, I think, that ought to be 
doing that. Paul the Apostle in the Bible says, ``When you talk of 
sinners, I am the chief,'' and I am a heck of a lot worse than he was, 
so I am the last person to be talking about this, but we have lost our 
moral compass in America.
  We are not going to solve the problem just by passing legislation. We 
have to turn back to the Good Lord. It says up here ``In God We 
Trust,'' but boy, we pass legislation all the time in this place and we 
do not pay much attention to that, what it says up there behind the 
lectern.
  In Second Chronicles in the Bible, chapter 7, verse 14, it says:

       If my people who are called by my name will humble 
     themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their 
     wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their 
     sins and heal their land.

  We need as a country to start realizing that. If we start turning 
back to the precepts of God, and the Holy Bible, and the Koran, and the 
New Testament, if we start turning back to the things that made this 
country great and start believing in the fundamental morals that made 
this country great, then things will start getting better. No amount of 
legislation is going to change things until we realize that fact.

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