[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



      [[Page H4552]] TAKING THE COWBOY HAT OFF THE MILITIA PROBLEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise at this time to take the cowboy 
hat off the militia problem that the Speaker tried to put on it this 
weekend on national television.
  For any of you who were watching the Speaker this weekend on national 
television, he said, `We have to understand there is in rural America, 
particularly in the West, a genuine fear of the Federal Government.'' 
He added that this genuine fear seemed to be driving otherwise average 
Westerners into the Rocky Mountains to create some kind of a Rocky 
Mountain guerrilla group or some such thing.
  Well, I rise to say that is not true, that that is an extremist 
position in the West, and that we in the West are not encouraging that 
type of thing. I also find all of this very interesting, because I 
would be terribly surprised if the Speaker or any other Member of this 
body rose to talk about the genuine fear of the Crips and the Bloods or 
the genuine fear of the Members of the Aryan Nation, or the genuine 
fear of the Ku Klux Klan, or on and on and on. We would tell them all 
to grow up and get a life.
  Now, what about these militias and what about the paranoid style of 
politics that has been practiced by some of these overgrown, overaged, 
GI Joes that appear to be rather on a lost patrol? Well, first of all, 
unfortunately, it is not a regional phenomenon. They are not all 
hunkered into the Rocky Mountains. The militia pup tents have raised 
their heads all over the country. They are in Georgia, they are in New 
York, they are in Michigan, they are in Montana, and, yes, 
unfortunately, they are in my State too. So let us not try and just put 
a cowboy hat on it. Let us deal with the fact that they are everywhere. 
Let us not romanticize this. Let us realize that this is not a genuine 
fear, this is ridiculous, and this is paranoid politics at its absolute 
worse.
  The second part that comes into all of this is an attempt to try and 
draw some kind of a urban-rural, and therefore Western-Eastern, 
polarization on this. What I want to point out is the Rocky Mountain 
States are 71 percent urban. That may come as a surprise to people that 
Arizona is more urban that Ohio, and
 Neavada as urban as Pennsylvania. That even a hot topic of banning 
assault weapons that people often want to say is impossible to do in 
the West, when you poll, you find people in the Rocky Mountain States 
poll the same as any other State. So those kind of regional differences 
do not pan out.

  Finally, the paranoid fear of government is an extremist position, 
and every one of us ought to say that. People who have a fear of 
government should go to the ballot box and not their bullets. Ballots, 
not bullets, is the way to approach this government. I am very troubled 
when I hear people saying that we should accept this, pat people on the 
head, and not take it on.
  I am especially surprised the Speaker has not done more to abuse the 
notion of this paranoia. I really hope that all of us in this body look 
at what we might be contributing to this kind of paranoia and ask if we 
are. As Pogo once said to us, we ought to look in the mirror and meet 
the enemy and find out if it is us.
  I hope all of this regionalistic romanticism and everything else 
stops, and we start saying there is no reason to be paranoid about a 
democratic form of government.
  Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I yield to the gentleman from Montana.
  Mr. WILLIAMS. As the gentlewoman knows, I represent Montana, all of 
it, the little bit of urban we have out there and the lot of rural we 
have. Like the gentlewoman, I, too, was watching television and heard 
Speaker Gingrich make his latest in a series of wedge statements, in 
which he seemed to try to divide the West out as a place that was 
somewhat paranoid about the Federal Government. I do not know what part 
of the West our good Speaker was talking about, but he was not talking 
about Montana.
  Montanans are frightened by the militia, not the Federal Government. 
Montanans are frightened by outlaws, not by those who would enforce the 
law at local, county, State and Federal levels. My Montanans, as with 
your constituents in Colorado and our colleagues and constituents 
throughout the West, recognize full well that the West, for the most 
part, has been a wonderful partner in having settled and developed the 
West. The Federal Government plumbed the West. We are, after all, a 
hydraulic society that insists on making the deserts flourish. It is 
the Federal Government that set out the Interstate Highway Systems and 
has done so much to help the economy of the West, and we appreciate the 
involvement of the Federal Government. We do not fear it.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Nor do we in Colorado.

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