[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 17, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H4101-H4102]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        THOUGHTS ON THE U.S. FLAG AND A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to come over today for the 
discussion of the flag amendment because of meeting with some of my 
constituents and because of an important markup in the Committee on 
Resources. However, I would like to tell my colleagues and

[[Page H4102]]

others about an article or a column that was written in the July 9 
issue of Newsweek Magazine by a woman named Joan Jacobsen.
  She told that she was an antiwar protestor in the late 1960s and 
early 1970s and had many very bitter arguments with her father who was 
a brigadier general in the Army. Then she wrote a few days ago about 
her father's passing. She said this: ``Two days after my father died, 
as the visiting hours at the funeral home ended and we were putting on 
our coats, there was one last visitor. He was a stooped, solitary man 
who walked slowly to the open coffin and gazed down at my father, lying 
in his military dress uniform. Suddenly, the visitor stood up straight, 
and still looking at his Army comrade, gave the brisk salute of the 
spirited young GI that he must have been 55 years ago. Then he slowly 
lowered his arm and became an old man once more, turning and shuffling 
out the door. His gallant gesture has come to symbolize a profound 
shift in my feelings toward the United States military.''
  Ms. Jacobsen continued: ``The following day at the funeral service, 
the soldiers draped the American flag over the coffin and accompanied 
it from the church to the cemetery. As we gathered at my father's grave 
site under a light December rain, four members of the honor guard stood 
at attention. One soldier raised his rifle and fired three shots while 
the bugler played Taps. The flag was removed from the coffin and slowly 
and meticulously folded into a triangular shape. After one soldier 
inserted the empty casings into the flag's angled pocket, the rest of 
the guard lined up in formation behind the highest-ranking officer, who 
approached my teenage son. The officer, holding the folded flag on his 
outstretched palms and looking straight at my boy, said, `Please accept 
this flag on behalf of a grateful Nation.'
  ``And so it was, at the end, the United States Army that provided my 
family and me with a noble conclusion to my father's life. I began to 
realize that the military traditions I had once considered 
unquestionably rigid endure because they serve a purpose. Every 
morning, as long as he was able,'' and I want everyone to hear this, 
especially. ``Every morning, as long as he was able, my father raised 
the American flag on the pole outside his house, observed a moment of 
silence, then stood at attention and saluted. I had always thought this 
exercise sweetly eccentric,'' Ms. Jacobsen said, ``but also 
meaningless. Now, I envy the ritual.''
  Mr. Speaker, I think in at least a small way, this lady has explained 
what this flag means to so many people in this country, and that this 
flag is a whole lot more than just a simple piece of cloth.
  In the great song of the ``Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' Mr. 
Speaker, it says, ``In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across 
the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me. As he 
died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.''
  That is what so much of what we do today is all about. The battle or 
the struggle for freedom is ongoing. It is never ending. There are 
always tyrants and dictators from abroad who would take our freedom 
away if they had the slightest chance to do so, and there are always 
liberal elitists and bureaucrats from within who want to live our lives 
for us and spend our money for us and take away our freedom, slowly but 
surely.
  I think of this in relation to a hearing before the Subcommittee on 
National Parks this morning. We talked about the Antiquities Act. Mr. 
Speaker, one can never satisfy government's appetite for money or land. 
We talked in the hearing this morning about how 70 million acres have 
been locked up, almost all of it just in the last few years, and that 
70 million acres does not even count what we have in the national 
parks, in the national forests and all of that.
  Mr. Speaker, if we do not wake up and realize that we are slowly, 
very slowly doing away with private property in this country, we are 
about to lose a very important element of our freedom and our 
prosperity, and we are about to lose the freedom that this man fought 
for and supported all of those years and why so many people have given 
their lives for this country and in defense of that flag. I am very 
pleased that this Miss Jacobsen realized that and wrote such a moving 
column in Newsweek. I just wanted to call that to the attention of my 
colleagues tonight.

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