[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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