[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 27 (Wednesday, March 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H743]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     DEFINING DEVIANCY, UP AND DOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, we just took a vote on the Ten 
Commandments and a controversy that is occurring in Alabama. I heard 
ridicule from a lot of Members saying, gee, is this the only thing that 
the House of Representatives can do? This is a trivial little matter. 
It is something that just does not really make a big difference.
  But I am here to tell the Members that I think it is an extremely 
important thing we just voted on. If nothing else, it shows there are a 
group of us that are ready to say enough is enough to the radicalism of 
the past 30 years. It has created a valueless void that I believe has 
torn down our civilization.
  To reject the radicalism of the past 30 years, the first thing we 
have to do is recognize what has happened. We have had what has been 
called by many, defining deviancy down and defining deviancy up. To 
define deviancy up, what you do is try to make conventional behavior 
seem radical and radical behavior seem conventional, so just putting 
the Ten Commandments of God up on the wall in a courtroom in the United 
States of America is suddenly a radical, dangerous concept.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I would say to these ACLU members and to other 
Americans that would call that a radical notion, I would say to them, 
read the writings of James Madison. He, after all, is the father of the 
Constitution that these radicals claim to be protecting.
  As he was drafting the Constitution, James Madison, the father of the 
Constitution, wrote:

       We have staked the entire future of the American 
     civilization not upon the power of government, but upon the 
     capacity of Americans to govern themselves, control 
     themselves, and sustain themselves according to the Ten 
     Commandments of God.

  How can they claim that the Ten Commandments are a radical part of 
our heritage, and how can they claim that they must strip the Ten 
Commandments from public life to protect the Constitution, when the 
father of the Constitution and the fourth President of the United 
States of America said that American civilization's future is based 
upon this, as we are drafting the Constitution?
  How could they say that when the father of our country, George 
Washington, in his farewell address, speaking to a young America, said: 
It is impossible to govern this country or any country in the world 
rightly without a belief in God and the Ten Commandments. How could 
they say it?
  How could they say that a judge in the State of Alabama or in 
California or in Massachusetts has absolutely no right to decide 
whether the Ten Commandments goes on the wall, when our Framers said it 
was an issue that States could address?
  We had Justice Joseph Story, who wrote one of the first commentaries 
on the Constitution for a sitting justice of the Supreme Court. He 
wrote that:

       The whole power over the subject of religion is left 
     exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon 
     according to their own sense of justice and the State 
     Constitutions.

  Thomas Jefferson wrote the same, saying that the 1st amendment and 
the 10th amendment combined left matters regarding religion to the 
States. Jefferson wrote, ``Certainly no power to prescribe any 
religious exercise or to assume the authority in any religious 
discipline has been delegated to the general government.'' It must, 
then, rest with the States.
  I am sure many people, including some on the school board in my 
hometown, would consider radical the words of Abraham Lincoln if he 
said these words in our school system, where in my hometown a political 
set of guidelines has driven any mention of faith from the schools.
  What would these radicals say to Abraham Lincoln's 1863 proclamation, 
while President:

       We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other 
     Nation has ever grown, but we have forgotten God. Intoxicated 
     with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to 
     feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too 
     proud to pray to the God that made us.

  Is that radical? Were the words of Madison, the father of our 
Constitution, radical? Were the words of Washington radical? If so, Mr. 
Speaker, I admit, maybe some of us today are considered radical. We 
have to reverse what happened in 1947 with Everson, and rewrite what 
has happened.

                          ____________________