[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 73 (Tuesday, June 13, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H4225]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   PRESS USE OF TERM ``CONSERVATIVE''

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, Caspar Weinberger, our former Secretary of 
Defense, wrote a short column for Forbes Magazine recently that should 
make every conservative and every journalist stop and think for a 
moment.
  Let me quote: ``Why is it,'' the magazine asks, ``that the press 
always calls the worst elements in Iran the `conservatives' and refers 
to the group identified with President Khatami as the `reformers' or 
even the `liberals'?
  ``The fanatical mullahs who rule Iran . . . oppose human rights, 
freedom of speech and religion, and all other manifestations of an 
individual's right to achieve all he or she can.
  ``They believe in an all-powerful state, ruled by them, where the 
individual does not count.
  ``This is not conservatism.
  ``While President Khatami is not pro-America, he and certainly some 
of his followers believe in human rights and far more personal freedom 
than do the clerics.
  ``That is conservatism.''
  Mr. Speaker, we have to wonder what definition our friends in the 
Fourth Estate are using. Listen to their language. Is anyone they do 
not like a conservative?

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