[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 82 (Tuesday, June 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3282-H3283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           DEFENDING LIBERTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Griffith) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. I stand here today on the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives, and I come to talk about 
matters of import to this country and what should be important to each 
and every one of us.
  I often look, as I'm sitting on the floor getting ready to cast 
votes, down here at the front. You see ``tolerance'' and ``justice.'' 
And you see the word ``liberty''--you may not be able to see it at 
home, but there they are carved into the wood here.
  Liberty is extremely important to this country, and liberty is a 
fragile creature which can easily be extinguished if we, as citizens of 
the United States--and particularly those of us who are Members of 
Congress--do not take the opportunity to defend liberty, even when it 
sometimes may seem to be unpopular.
  Now we have, of recent, heard in the press reports that certain 
agencies of the United States Government have been accessing all kinds 
of information--phone records, et cetera. I think this is wrong. I 
think that the approach that has been taken is an overreach under the 
PATRIOT Act--although I believe that, when written, there were gray 
areas of the PATRIOT Act which could have been anticipated that there 
would be an overreach by the government. But some have interpreted that 
it's okay that you gather information even if it's just in the megadata 
on millions and millions of American citizens. I do not take that 
position. I believe that it is wrong, And I believe it cuts to the core 
of liberty in this country.
  Let me explain.
  To understand why we do things that we do, we have to look at the 
history of this country and, many times, of other countries, 
particularly Great Britain. When we look at our right not to have the 
government intrude into our homes, into our thoughts, into our very 
beings, it goes back to before the American Revolution. I would point 
to the 1760s as being instrumental.
  As a student of history at Emory and Henry College, I learned under 
Professor Raiser there that there was a fellow named John Wilkes. Now, 
John Wilkes was a rake of a man, and many times his actions I would not 
have approved of. But whether by design or just by circumstance, John 
Wilkes weighs heavy in both America's history and in the history of 
Great Britain.
  John Wilkes was from London. He stood for Parliament, was a member of 
Parliament. He began a secret printing on things that he didn't think 
that George III was doing correctly in the 1760s. One of those he 
printed in what was called the paper, the North Britain.
  In North Britain 35, John Wilkes actually inferred that George III 
may have acted dishonestly in reaching a treaty with the French. 
Needless to say, George III was incensed that this happened, and he 
issued, through his ministers, what was known as a general warrant--
that meaning that they could go, even though they didn't have a 
specific person, they didn't have a specific place, they could go into 
parts of London and search house to house, seizing papers, property, 
whatever they thought might lead to the conclusion of who was printing 
the North Britain and responsible in particular for North Britain No. 
45.
  Needless to say, after rounding up roughly 50 people and going into a 
number of houses, they did arrest Mr. John Wilkes, along with a number 
of other people, and it was ultimately determined that Mr. Wilkes was 
in fact responsible for the writing that the King found so 
inappropriate.
  It's also interesting to note that, as a part of this, in his legal 
defense, John Wilkes raised the issue of whether or not general 
warrants were in fact legal. The courts would later rule that they were 
not. The courts would later rule that they were not.
  Now, it's interesting--and I'll pull out a wonderful treatise on 
British history, just hits the highlights, the History of the English-
Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill, in talking 
about--and he acknowledges the faults of Mr. Wilkes, but he also points 
out the court's reasoning on this matter.
  The question of general warrants became a big issue. The radical-
minded Londoners welcomed the rebuff of the government. It goes on to 
talk about what Wilkes did, but it also goes on to tell us what the 
courts ruled.
  Let me see if I can find it here, if you will bear with me for just a 
minute. I appreciate your patience as I look for the exact quote. Here 
is Churchill talking about what the justices said:
  The officials pleaded--that would be the government officials of 
George, III--that they were immune from a suit by Wilkes because they 
were acting under government orders. Churchill says this large and 
sinister defense--the defense would be that they could use the general 
warrants--this large and sinister defense was rejected by the chief 
justice in words which remain a classic statement on the rule of law, 
quoting now the Chief Justice Lord Camden:
  With respect to the argument of state necessity or a distinction 
which has been aimed at between state offenses and others, the common 
law does not understand that kind of reasoning, nor do our books take 
notice of any such distinction.
  Wilkes was heralded as a hero of liberty. And there's a great 
controversy in history as to whether he was a true patriot, a true 
lover of liberty, or one who merely happened to fall into the 
circumstances at the time. I prefer to think he was a hero of liberty.
  Notwithstanding the fact that he ultimately prevailed in England, he 
was also seen across the pond in what would later be the United States, 
in the Colony--particularly in Massachusetts, but in other Colonies--as 
a hero of liberty. He was in communication with Sam Adams and the Sons 
of Liberty.
  At the same time, almost identical to this, there was a thing called 
Writs of Assistance. Now, those were writs that were used in naval 
terms dealing with trade. They said that whatever the King's people 
needed to do for assistance, they could have, very much like a general 
warrant, and some would argue that they were the same.

                              {time}  2100

  In Massachusetts, about this same time, there was a James Otis, Jr.--
this was pointed out, I must let you know, earlier today to me by 
Congressman Nadler. Mr. Otis argued the same things that were being 
argued in the Wilkes case in Great Britain. Sam Adams was present for 
those arguments, so he was communicating with John Wilkes and he was 
listening to the arguments against general warrants or writs of 
assistance made by Mr. Otis.

[[Page H3283]]

  What this ultimately led to was the fact that in our country we have 
long held it dear that we do not issue general warrants. And to read 
the Patriot Act, to say that you can obtain the phone records of 
millions of Americans--if, in fact, that be true, and it appears to be 
the case--that you can use that act to sort of back door a general 
warrant on information on most, if not all, American citizens, is to 
forget that we have a right against search and seizure because of the 
reasoning of our Founding Fathers and the work of Mr. Otis and the work 
of Mr. Wilkes. They cannot be seen just in a vacuum on that.
  Churchill later goes on to acknowledge that the work of Wilkes--
because Wilkes was pushing the issue of ``freedom of press''--that the 
entire Wilkesite movement not only led to an expansion in Great Britain 
of the freedom of the press but also underscored for the Founding 
Fathers of this Nation that ``everyone should have the right to speak 
their mind, and that they should be able to do so without having to 
worry about a government that finds their actions just for speaking 
their opinion to be intolerable.''
  So, ladies and gentlemen, I have come here this evening--because I 
think it's important that we understand--that notwithstanding this 
interpretation or that interpretation of the Patriot Act, if we allow 
the government to have the right to collect even the megadata--as they 
call it--on each and every one of us, that is a violation of the spirit 
of our Constitution, and I would submit to you a violation of the 
Constitution itself.
  I, for one, cherish our liberties. And in that balancing act that 
every government must face between security and liberty, I say we side 
on liberty, because we can never make society completely safe. The only 
way a government can guarantee you complete safety, ladies and 
gentlemen, is if they assign each and every one of us a padded room to 
live in: We're only allowed out in the Sun a certain amount of time so 
that we don't end up getting skin cancer. They determine what we eat, 
they determine what we breathe, they determine what we do. That is not 
a society that I choose to live in, nor one which I will stand idly by 
and allow it slowly to creep in on us. And while I don't think anybody 
in the administration would want to go that far, anyone who argues that 
we must have all of this information in order to be secure forgets that 
having security may not be worthwhile if we don't have liberty.
  So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask that you study the issues, you study 
the history, you study this carefully. Do we really want a government 
that knows all about us? Do we really want a government that can take 
away our freedom to converse with other people who may not agree with 
the government? I'm not talking about people who are plotting schemes 
against the government, but I'm talking about the right to talk to 
people who may have different ideas. In fact, many would argue we 
should do more talking here on the floor of the House.
  So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to study these issues. I ask you 
to go look at the arguments of Mr. Otis, look at the arguments of Mr. 
John Wilkes, look at the arguments that were made at a time when people 
understood that liberty was precious and it could easily be 
extinguished. I hope that you will join me in doing a little 
illumination on our country by talking about these issues everywhere 
you go, and making it clear to people that liberty is worth fighting 
for, and being willing to say--when I say fight, I mean stand up and 
say your peace--and that it's worth us taking a little bit of risk in 
order to preserve those liberties that have been fought for and won 
throughout the ages, beginning in the 1760s, culminating in the 
Constitution, and forward to this day.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.

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