[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 91 (Tuesday, June 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H5613]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 EPIDEMIC OF DEAFNESS IN RIGHT EAR AMONG REPUBLICANS WHEN IT COMES TO 
                        THE ADVOCACY OF VIOLENCE

  (Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I am struck by a terrible 
national epidemic that appears to have settled on the land. Significant 
numbers of right-wing thinkers, politicians, and advocates appear to 
all have gone deaf in one ear.
  Recently, we have heard many of the Republicans leaders and 
conservatives denounce violence, the advocacy thereof. People have 
talked about movies and other forms of entertainment in speeches which 
advocate violence. Strangely, however, they only seem to hear one kind 
of violence. When Gordon Liddy talks about how to shoot Federal law 
enforcement officials, he gets an award from some of these people. When 
entertainers who have Republican leanings make movies in which large 
numbers of people are shot for no apparent reason, that is apparently 
good.
  When people on the left say things that might be equally offensive to 
many of us, that draws condemnation. Obviously, those who believe in 
civil liberties, those who believe in free speech, believe in it no 
matter what the politics of those who say it, so when we have this one-
sided effort to criticize people who advocate violence or do not preach 
family values, but it is only aimed at one side of the spectrum, I am 
forced to conclude that there is some mysterious ailment in the land 
which has ended the hearing in the right ear of many of my colleagues.
  I hope that the National Institutes of Health, if there is any money 
left in its budget when the Republicans are through cutting taxes, 
raising defense, and cutting NIH, I hope they will look at this strange 
disease which makes it impossible for people to hear the advocacy of 
violence on the right and condemn it only when it comes from people 
they disagree with.


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