[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 95 (Tuesday, July 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H4908-H4909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OUR FOUNDING FATHERS WERE GREAT MEN OF GOD
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, with the Fourth of July having just
passed, I wanted to reflect on some of the thoughts I had and shared
with people in Glynn, Wayne, and Pierce County, GA, this past week. I
started out by saying, you know, one of the big thrills of Washington
is to occasionally go up to the top of the dome, and when you do that
it is kind of a special feeling. You duck into an unmarked and
inconspicuous door, you climb up about a story, some spiral steps in an
old roundhouse that used to contain some sort of a heating turbine, and
then you go on an 1865 catwalk in between the skin of the new dome and
the limestone of the old dome. You go up, round and round, for maybe 20
minutes on a set of steel concrete and cables, about 200 feet. Finally
you get to the top, and on the top you see one of the best views of
some of the most significant monuments in our country. You can see the
Washington Monument, the reflecting pond, the Lincoln Memorial, the
Jefferson Memorial, Robert E. Lee's home, and hidden in the trees, you
know, the Korean and the Vietnam Memorials are also there. Each one of
these monuments contains a special chapter in American history, and if
you look beyond these monuments, you can see a glimpse of America
herself.
On the Fourth of July we celebrate our Nation's birthday. It is
fitting that we reflect on these monuments and the great souls that
they immortalize. We can think about from Concord and Lexington to
Vietnam and Desert Storm we seek to understand more of our own history.
We look inside ourselves, if you will.
Standing on the balcony of the dome of the Capitol, Mr. Speaker, to
the far left you see Thomas Jefferson's monument, the third President,
founder of the University of Virginia, and author of the Declaration of
Independence. His work formally began when Richard Henry Lee introduced
a resolution for independence in the Continental Congress. Congress,
even then being Congress, decided to form a committee, and a committee
was formed consisting of Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Benjamin
Franklin, John Adams and the 34-year-old Thomas Jefferson. In the
nearby drafthouse he worked late into the Philadelphia nights, these
words:
``When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to
another'' and so forth.
As he labored, surely he knew the death warrant that would become not
just for him but for so many, the strife, the hardship and inevitably
war.
What guided Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin
Franklin? They were smart, they were enlightened, they were
visionaries, but did they also pray? I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that
like so many of our great American leaders that they did indeed pray,
because I think that our Founding Fathers were guiding them.
I also believe that they were men who were ready as this whole Nation
to sacrifice for this thing called freedom, and I think, third, that
they knew that freedom is fragile.
Let us talk about the godliness. We always hear about Thomas
Jefferson being a deist, which seems almost a buzz word for atheist,
yet on his monument Thomas Jefferson says: Can the liberties of a
Nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties
are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever. End of
quote.
Very explicit words, Mr. Speaker, and indeed a warning.
Likewise, Benjamin Franklin admonished delegates at the
Constitutional Convention to pray to break a deadlock. His words were
in the beginning of our war with Britain, we prayed daily for guidance.
Our prayers were heard and were answered. Have we now forgotten this
powerful friend? The longer I live, this I know to be true. God governs
the affairs of men. For if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without
his notice, is it probable a Nation can rise without his aide?
And George Washington on his tomb, rather than pontificating about
the many, many achievements he has, he instead merely quotes the gospel
of John.
I submit to you that our Founding Fathers were great men and women of
God, and they had divine guidance in that America was not just born by
luck or by accident. Second, Mr. Speaker, we can rest assured that they
had made many, many sacrifices and were willing to, just as millions of
Americans have also done, follow in their example. Indeed Thomas
Jefferson and George Washington would be much happier spending their
time at Monticello and Mount Vernon.
Robert E. Lee, as we look at his, the Custis mansion across the
river, Robert E. Lee lost this to Arlington Cemetery; and adjoining him
by way of Memorial Bridge, Abraham Lincoln lost his life because of the
Civil War, as did 360,000 Union soldiers and 135,000 Confederate
soldiers.
Their examples were followed in every war. The Revolutionary War,
25,000 died; the War of 1812, 2,300 died; the Mexican War, 13,000; the
Spanish American War, 2,300; World War I, 117,000; World War II,
408,000. And while their monuments cannot be seen from the top of the
Capitol, Mr. Speaker, there are two very significant monuments. One
consists of 19 life-sized figures. In the morning mist they seem to
move. The wind catches their ponchos, their faces strained to the sky,
their bodies bent in fatigues. They are American soldiers in the Korean
conflict, a conflict that claimed 3 million Koreans and 1 million
Chinese citizens. These soldiers are tired, hungry, cold. Their sunken
eyes search for a sniper and surely for hope. They move slowly and
eternally toward a black marble wall that merely says four words:
Freedom is not free.
They should know. Over 54,000 of them died. Their figures haunt us,
but as we turn around through the trees across the reflecting pond and
over the berm, there lies another wall. Here we face 58,211 names of
other great Americans. This wall is still sober and forceful. Each name
is a story.
Brantley, David Watson: Born 1946, Kite, GA; graduated
1964, Glynn Academy; died June 7, 1968 from an exploding mine
in the Huz Nghiz Province.
Cameron, James Frederick: graduated Glynn Academy; shot
down over the Tan Kieu Hamlet, September 13, 1969.
Smith, Russell Lamar: Born March 26, 1948; graduated Glynn
Academy 1966; married, one unborn son; killed by small arms
fire; DaNang, November 28, 1968.
Honaker, Raymond Kermit: Born February 16, 1949; graduated
Glynn Academy 1967; helicopter shot down, August 31, 1968.
Armstrong, Atwell Asbell: Born August 19, 1947; killed by
small arms fire, October 25, 1968 at Song Be.
Miller, Hebert: Killed April 21, 1971, near Quang Tri
Province.
Rabb, Robert of Darien, GA; his loving mother Doris Rabb is
with us today.
Grina, Thomas: Born November 16, 1949; killed December 19,
1967 by a ground explosion trying to rescue his fellow
marines pinned in a killing field.
From Brunswick alone: Leonard J. Peacock, Roger E. Mathis,
Carlton Amerson, Larry Williams Bailey, John Devvin Bell, and
Rayford H. King.
The names go on and on and on from coastal Georgia, from the entire
East Coast of the United States and all through the United States, each
soldier a hero, each paying the highest price for this ideal we call
freedom.
And on this national birthday let us proudly and sincerely appreciate
their lives and their family. Let us recognize the high and significant
advancement they gave the cause of freedom. The Vietnam war was to stop
the growth of communism so we can say loudly: Mission accomplished.
Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, all once in
great peril of Communist rule, are now out of danger and democratic
nations today, and 179 out of 192 or 93 percent of the world's
countries have free elections. And in the last 10 years 69 nations for
the first time in their history have had free elections, and that
includes five from the former Soviet Union.
Would this have happened without Vietnam? Hardly. Again I say:
Mission accomplished.
But, Mr. Speaker, as we go back and review these monuments, let me
close with this: Last summer when the Olympic torch came through
Washington I asked one of the Olympic leaders, what happens when the
torch goes out? He said, we merely relight it. And I said, is that it,
you just relight it? He
[[Page H4909]]
said yes, that is it. What a shame that freedom's torch cannot be so
easily relit. I believe that the torch of freedom that we pass down
from generation to generation is more like a candle than a torch and it
is a stormy night and the wind is blowing.
Edmund Burke said this, Mr. Speaker. The price of freedom is eternal
vigilance, and the name of the great soldiers whose names are on the
monuments and the names who are not on monuments, let us never forget
that Americans have sacrificed a lot for this ideal we call freedom.
Freedom is indeed fragile.
On the field of Gettysburg, Lincoln put it this way:
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far
so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us--that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom--and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Let us remember that, and I will close with the words of Edmund
Burke. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Let us remember that
on this Nation's birthday.
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