[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 48 (Thursday, March 25, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 PEACE

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 25, 1999

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, today I rise and with gratitude to Edmund 
Burke and paraphrase words he first spoke 224 years ago this week. As 
it is presently true that to restore liberty and dignity to a nation so 
great and distracted as ours is indeed a significant undertaking. For, 
judging of what we are by what we ought to be, I have persuaded myself 
that this body might accept this reasonable proposition.
  The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war, not 
peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless 
negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented 
from principle, in all part of the earth; not peace to depend on 
juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking 
the shadowy boundaries of distant nations. It is simply peace, sought 
in its natural course and in it ordinary haunts.
  Let other nations always keep the idea of their sovereign self-
government associated with our Republic and they will befriend us, and 
no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from our 
allegiance. But let it be once understood that our government may be 
one thing and their sovereignty another, that these two things exist 
without mutual regard one for the other--and the affinity will be gone, 
the friendship loosened and the alliance hasten to decay and 
dissolution. As long as we have the wisdom to keep this country as the 
sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common 
faith, wherever mankind worships freedom they will turn their faces 
toward us. The more they multiply, the more friends we will have, the 
more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be our 
relations. Slavery they can find anywhere, as near to us as Cuba or as 
remote as China. But until we become lost to all feeling of our 
national interest and natural legacy, freedom and self-rule they can 
find in none but the American founding. These are precious commodities, 
and our nation alone was founded them. This is the true currency which 
binds to us the commerce of nations and through them secures the wealth 
of the world. But deny others of their national sovereignty and self-
government, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and 
must still preserve, friendship among nations. Do not entertain so weak 
an imagination as that UN Charters and Security Councils, GATT and 
international laws, World Trade Organizations and General Assemblies, 
are what promote commerce and friendship. Do not dream that NATO and 
peacekeeping forces are the things that can hold nations together. It 
is the spirit of community that gives nations their lives and efficacy. 
And it is the spirit of the constitution of our founders that can 
invigorate every nation of the world, even down to the minutest of 
these.
  For is it not the same virtue which would do the thing for us here in 
these United States? Do you imagine than that it is the Income Tax 
which pays our revenue? That it is the annual vote of the Ways and 
Means Committee, which provide us an army? Or that it is the Court 
Martial which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! Surely, no! 
It is the private activity of citizens which gives government revenue, 
and it is the defense of our country that encourages young people to 
not only populate our army and navy but also has infused them with a 
patriotism without which our army will become a base rubble and our 
navy nothing but rotten timber.
  All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the 
profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no 
place among us: a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what 
is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from begin qualified to 
be directors of the great movement of this nation, are not fit to turn 
a wheel in the machinery of our government. But to men truly initiated 
and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which in the 
opinion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence, 
are in truth everything. Magnanimity in politics is often the truest 
wisdom, and a great nation and little minds go ill together. If we are 
conscious of our situation, and work zealously to fill our places as 
becomes the history of this great institution, we ought to auspiciate 
all our public proceedings on Kosovo with the old warning of the 
Church, Sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of 
that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting 
to the dignity of this high calling, our forefathers turned a savage 
wilderness into a glorious nation, and have made the most extensive and 
the only honorable conquests, not by bombing and sabre-rattling, but by 
promoting the wealth, the liberty, and the peace of mankind. Let us 
gain our allies as we obtain our own liberty. Respect of self-
government has made our nation all that it is, peace and neutrality 
alone will makes ours the Republic that it can yet still be.

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