[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1382-H1383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MORAL DECLINE IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hefley). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I am increasingly concerned about the moral 
decline we are facing in America. As a society, it seems to be sinking 
to an

[[Page H1383]]

all-time low. Sunday mornings are often reserved for a time for us to 
exercise our faith, but now it has become the Nation's pastime to 
defend the undefendable.
  Men and women who have proclaimed to care about justice for women in 
the workplace now defend sexual advances and now defend inappropriate 
behavior. Most parents want to protect their children. I know I do. I 
have a 17-year-old daughter and two younger sons, and I want to be able 
to protect them from any unlawful pressure or from bad behavior that is 
the lowest and worst in our society.
  I am particularly concerned about my daughter, because she will be 
the first to go out on her own. When she attends a college, I do not 
want a professor or the president of the college or university groping 
her to pressure her for sex for performance, for grades. And when she 
gets her first job, I do not want the CEO or president of the 
corporation or any of her fellow workers making sexual advances in 
exchange for promotions.
  And for my sons, it is a great compromise to the virtues and values 
that built this great Nation for us to just let them watch a weeknight 
evening of television. The language, the violence, the lack of morals, 
the attacks on the institution of marriage all go against what civil 
people do when they want to live peaceably together.
  Only a few programs, very few programs, restore our faith in hard 
work, honesty, integrity, respect for each other. But most of 
television leaves us wanting, wanting for heroes that will bring us to 
our highest and best.
  Yes, our economy is strong. The New York Stock Exchange presses new 
records almost weekly. Unemployment is low. The welfare rolls are down. 
More and more people are working and earning more and more money. Our 
bank accounts seem full, but our hearts and souls are empty.
  Well, my colleagues have heard, ``You can't legislate morality, so 
you can't change our society.'' Well, first of all, that is a false 
statement. When a 14-year-old boy breaks into a liquor store to rob the 
store and kills an attendant, that is against the law. It is also 
against God's law, the Ten Commandments.
  But we can do our best as a government to prevent that 14-year-old 
from making that decision through good education, through encouraging 
strong families and communities, trying to steer them from a decision 
that would destruct them for the rest of their lives and harm society. 
But we as a government cannot change that young boy's heart. And that 
is really what needs to happen.
  To change a young man's heart, we have to go beyond just the laws of 
the land, and each of us has to take on a responsibility, a 
responsibility to first live our lives as we would like others to live 
theirs; second, to build strong families, then strong communities. 
Because what happens when that 14-year-old boy makes a decision is, he 
goes against all those things that built this country as a great 
Nation: hard work, integrity, virtue, faith in God.
  Those are the values and virtues that each of us must turn back to in 
order to save our society from this downward spiral, in order to 
inspire us to rise beyond our daily circumstance to our highest and 
best, not only as individuals, but as a great Nation.

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