[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 6 (Friday, January 10, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H153-H158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LIBERTY AND TYRANNY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, sometimes people say, Gee, if you are back 
here in Texas, you ought to be in Washington in session. I have to 
remind them that when we are in session, it is often the single biggest 
threat to American liberty, because when we are in session, we pass 
laws; and most every law, in some way, impacts people's liberty in one 
way or another, for good or for bad.
  So often we think we know so much more here in Washington, that we 
can do so much better than others. And, of course, that message is not 
helped by ignorance in the media, particularly left-wing and so many in 
the mainstream.
  Mr. Speaker, I spoke a couple of days ago here about a real burden on 
my heart for women who are lured into ruts by promises of money by the 
Federal Government, lured into dependence, and how that is immoral for 
the government to do that. The government is not supposed to encourage 
or lure people into conduct that is not helpful to the individual. The 
government is supposed to be about encouraging good conduct. But if you 
do evil, then you should be afraid of the government because, as Romans 
says, God didn't give the sword to the government in vain.
  That is the point, that we should not be about encouraging or paying 
people to engage in conduct that is hurtful to them. And yet ignorance 
in the left wing of our media is so pervasive that you could actually 
have people write stories saying I was up here blaming single moms. I 
mean, it is either ignorance or just complete dishonesty of people that 
want to destroy the very fabric and foundation of this country because 
of their ill will for all that is good and wholesome.

                              {time}  1130

  Why would they want to protect a system that lures people into 
dependency and prevents them from reaching their God-given potential? I 
realize some of them don't believe there is a God, and that is 
problematic because, since the Founders believed that we were endowed 
by a Creator with certain inalienable rights, among those life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness, if you don't believe there is a Creator, 
it creates a problem, because then you have to think that government is 
the sole source of your rights, and if that is the case, you really 
have no rights.
  C.S. Lewis pointed out after he went from being an atheist to being a 
believer in some God, some universal authority of right and wrong, if 
you don't believe that, then there can be no justice, no right and no 
wrong, if there is not a universal standard. So if it is relying on 
some government to establish what is right and not an innate sense 
instilled in us by some Higher Power, then there's no hope for most 
people of ever having rights, freedoms and liberties as we have had in 
this country.
  It is plain that as we become more and more secular, there become 
fewer and fewer liberties and less and less privacy. Now especially, 
looking at ObamaCare, the government invades every room in the house. 
It used to be that our liberal friends here in the House complained 
repeatedly if they thought a Republican bill might, in some way, invade 
some room in the house. Yet without a single Republican vote, the 
Democrats passed through a law that invades every room in the house.

[[Page H154]]

  I am a big fan of Mark R. Levin, and I don't know that there is a 
better synopsis or there could be a better textbook for people to learn 
about our founding history than the book ``Liberty and Tyranny.'' I 
guess the reason ``Liberty and Tyranny'' could never be a textbook for 
some government class would be that it costs less than $20, and in 
order to be a textbook, some professor normally has to make 100, 200, 
$300 a book, or it is not going to be utilized; or some leftwing source 
has to be the one providing the book and profiting, or it doesn't get 
used. ``Liberty and Tyranny'' has so many incredible jewels, as I have 
read from here on the floor numerous times.
  In Mark's last book, there are things that we need to be reminded of 
that this brilliant--I don't know that anybody knows more about the 
history of the Supreme Court than Mark Levin, a brilliant man when it 
comes to our law, our Constitution, our Supreme Court--but he mentions 
in here, he draws so much from our history and throws it back in our 
faces so that we can't miss it, but Mark Levin points out the Nation 
has entered an age of post-constitutional, soft tyranny. Then he quotes 
from French thinker, philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, as he explained 
presciently:

       It covers the surface of a society with a network of small, 
     complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most 
     original minds and the most energetic characters cannot 
     penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not 
     shattered but softened, bent, and guided. Men are seldom 
     forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from 
     acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents 
     existence. It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, 
     enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people until each 
     nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid 
     industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.

  I know, because some people don't like to be beat up by the left 
wing--as I apparently do--they don't want to be pointing these things 
out, and so I know that apparently we have got Republican staffers 
helping Senators who think that the things in this book are not worth 
spreading around the country. This is our history. If you don't learn 
your history, then how can you ever figure out the best way to go 
forward?
  I am a big fan of the comments of Satchel Paige, an incredible 
baseball player. He came up with some great lines. I guess he is 
baseball's answer to Will Rogers. He is often quoted for saying, 
``don't look back, they may be gaining on you,'' but I have read that 
later in life he had a quote that I like even better. Satchel Paige 
reportedly said: ``It is okay to look back, just don't stare.''
  Well, I majored in history. I think it is good to look back. As the 
old adage goes, ``those who refuse to learn from history are destined 
to repeat it.'' Some follow up and say that ``those who do learn from 
history will find new ways to screw up,'' but that is another lesson.
  Mark Levin goes on in ``The Liberty Amendments'' and said, de 
Tocqueville observed further:

       It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to 
     use men in order to make things great. I wish they would try 
     a little more to make great men, that they would set less 
     value on the work and more upon the workman, that they would 
     never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when 
     every man belonging to it is individually weak, and that no 
     form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to 
     make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous 
     and enfeebled citizens.
       Today, Congress operates not as the Framers intended but in 
     the shadows, where it dreams up its most notorious and 
     oppressive laws, coming into the light only to trumpet the 
     genius and earnestness of its goings on and to enable Members 
     to cast their votes.

  He goes on to say:

       Congress also and often delegates unconstitutionally law-
     making power to a gigantic, ever growing administrative state 
     that in turn unleashes on society myriad regulations and 
     rules at such a rapid rate that people cannot possibly know 
     of them either, and if by chance they do, they cannot 
     possibly comprehend them. Nonetheless, ignorance which is 
     widespread and deliberately so is no excuse for noncompliance 
     for which the citizen is heavily fined and severely punished.

  This is really a great synopsis of where we are. Congress thinks we 
know better, the President thinks he knows better, and some of this was 
started before the last Republican President left office with TARP. 
What a disaster. You can never achieve greatness if you do not have the 
same opportunity to fail. If the tightrope you are walking to achieve 
something extraordinary is sitting on the ground, then there is no 
risk, and there is nothing great achieved. Yet, this government wants 
to put such restrictions on people that they can never reach greatness. 
They can never reach as high as the grass might go.

  I love this part in Mark Levin's book, and I realize it may bother 
not only the leftwing but some Republican Senate staffers. Mark Levin 
wrote:

       Having delegated broad lawmaking power to executive branch 
     departments and agencies of its own creation contravening the 
     separation of powers doctrine, Congress now watches as the 
     President inflates the congressional delegations even further 
     and proclaims repeatedly the authority to rule by executive 
     fiat in defiance of or over the top of the same Congress that 
     sanctioned a domineering executive branch in the first place. 
     Notwithstanding Congress' delinquency but because of it an 
     unquenched President in a hurry to expedite a societal 
     makeover has repeatedly admonished Congress that `if it won't 
     act soon to protect future generations, I will.'
       That is, if Congress will not genuflect to his demands and 
     pass laws to his liking, he will act on his own. And the 
     President has made good on his refrain on a growing list of 
     matters. He has, in fact, displayed an impressive aptitude 
     for imperial rule with the help from a phalanx of policy 
     czars from immigration, the environment, labor law to health 
     care, welfare and energy. The President has excised his 
     executive discretion to create new law, abrogate existing law 
     and generally contrive ways to exploit legal ambiguities as a 
     means to his ends. He has also declared the Senate in recess 
     when it was not, thereby bypassing the Senate's 
     constitutional advice and consent role to install several 
     partisans in top Federal posts. Today, this is glorified and 
     glamorized as compassionate progressivism. The Framers called 
     it `despotism.'

  Then here is what makes Mark's book so great. He goes right to the 
source and quotes ``Federalist 48'' by James Madison. Most people give 
more credit to Madison for the Constitution getting specifically 
written than other people, but Madison wrote:

       An elective despotism was not the government we fought for 
     but one which should not only be founded on free principles 
     but in which the powers of government should be so divided 
     and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no 
     one could transcend their legal limits without being 
     effectually checked and restrained by the others.

  Mark Levin cites ``Federalist 78'' by Alexander Hamilton:

       Whoever attentively considers the different departments of 
     power must perceive that in a government in which they are 
     separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of 
     its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the 
     political rights of the Constitution because it will be least 
     in a capacity to annoy or injure them.

  I mean this is the Founders saying that the Supreme Court that we 
must now all bow and scrape to as they rewrite the Constitution in 
their own image like some kind of gods on Mount Olympus, the Founders 
said they are the least dangerous because they are going to have the 
least power to ``annoy or injure.''
  Levin goes on:

       Yet having seized for itself in the early years of the 
     Nation the final words on all matters before it, the Supreme 
     Court, with just five of its nine members, can impose the 
     most far-reaching and breathtaking rulings on the whole of 
     society for which there is no recourse.

  My copy of Mark's book is falling apart, but it is still good stuff.
  He also says in ``The Liberty Amendments'':

       What was to be a relatively innocuous Federal Government 
     operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of 
     powers has become an ever-present and unaccountable force.

  This is so scary, but Mark Levin puts it so well. He describes the 
Federal Government as the Nation's largest creditor, debtor, lender, 
employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, 
insurer, health care provider and pension guarantor. Moreover, with 
aggrandized police powers, what it does not control directly, it bans 
or mandates by regulation.

                              {time}  1145

  For example, the Federal Government regulates most things bathroom, 
laundry room, kitchen, as well as the mortgage you hold on your house. 
It designs your automobile and dictates the kind of fuel it uses. It 
regulates your baby's toys, crib, and stroller, plans your children's 
school curricula and lunch menu and administers their student loans in 
colleges.

[[Page H155]]

  At your place of employment, the Federal Government oversees 
everything from the racial gender and age diversity of the workforce, 
to the hours, wages, and benefits paid. Indeed, the question is not 
what the Federal Government regulates, but what it does not regulate. 
And it makes you wonder, how can a people, incapable of selecting their 
own light bulbs and toilets, possess enough confidence to vote for 
their own rulers and fill out complicated tax returns.
  Mark also points out that the Federal Government consumes nearly 25 
percent of all goods and services produced each year by the American 
people.
  That should, if people will wake up, it should begin to scare them 
because if the Federal Government is the largest consumer, just on that 
alone, it has the power to bankrupt companies, to make companies. And 
then you start running into the horrible constitution that we rubber-
stamped and may have helped put together over in Afghanistan, where 
they so centralized the power in the federal government that the 
President in Afghanistan gets to appoint governors, gets to appoint 
mayors, gets to appoint police chiefs, appoint the highest level of 
teachers, appoints many of the slate of part of the legislature, has 
tremendous power of the purse, and you wonder why that country is about 
to fall as soon as we pull out, when we were complicit in a 
constitution that on its face should have told people this government 
under this constitution is doomed to fail and fall back into Taliban 
hands, and that is exactly what is about to happen.
  We should have known better than to help Afghanistan and be complicit 
in a constitution that does what our Founders said should never be done 
for a federal government. But when we have lost the lessons of our 
founding such that Congress allows power to be totally usurped by a 
Supreme Court or by an executive branch, and the American people do not 
rise up and condemn the comments by a leader in the Senate who says, 
What right does the House have to say how the money is spent?, that 
ought to be enough to have a recall election if a leader in the Senate 
doesn't even know why the House of Representatives is supposed to have 
an extremely loud voice in how the money is spent.
  And, in fact, any bill that raises revenue must start in the House, 
which the same Senate leaders did not understand, or perhaps they 
understood and tried to tap dance around, but since the Supreme Court 
and Chief Justice Roberts rewrote ObamaCare, the un-Affordable Care 
Act, because it is certainly not affordable, it is costing so many 
people in my district, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, party 
doesn't matter when it comes to ObamaCare. Seniors that I visit with at 
retirement homes and communities are scared because they are realizing 
and they are finding out, gee, ObamaCare cut $716 billion from 
reimbursing health care providers for care we were going to get.
  And they are starting to figure out even though they were assured, 
you don't have to worry, you are not going to be affected, you are not 
going to lose any health care because this is only cutting what we 
reimburse health care providers, seniors are smart folks. They have 
been around awhile, and they are figuring out, wait a minute, you cut 
$700 million out of reimbursement for our health care providers with 
ObamaCare, really, and you think we are not going to figure out that 
that means we are not going to get the treatment we need. We are going 
to be told we don't have the knee replacement we need or the hip 
replacement we need because we are too old, or we get put on some list 
for an exorbitant amount of time which means you are hoping that we 
will die before we get the treatment we need, as often happens in 
England and Canada and other places with totally government-run health 
care.
  Single payer, that is such a misnomer. It is government-run private 
lives. Instead of single payer, it is government. It is the GRE, 
government running everything. When the government can tell you what 
care you can have and not have, they control your life and they control 
how quickly your life will come to an end.
  It is wrong. It is so against the foundation, the principles upon 
which we were founded.
  My brilliant friend, Mark Levin said:

       What was to be a relatively innocuous Federal Government, 
     operating from a defined enumeration of specific agents of 
     power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force.

  I want to reiterate that because the problem that we see repeatedly 
now is when someone presides over death of people entrusted to their 
care and protection, they can stand up and say, What difference at this 
point does it make? So they died. What difference does it make why they 
died, how they died?
  A Libyan acquaintance a few weeks ago said, you guys in the United 
States, Congress in Washington, are asking the wrong question. Of 
course, personally, I think it is an appropriate question to ask: Who 
killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, and our two former Navy 
SEALs? Who killed them? Who killed Ty Woods and Glen Doherty? Who blew 
off much of the leg of David Ubben?
  I think it is a legitimate question, but this Libyan man I met said, 
You keep asking in America who killed these people. You ought to be 
asking why they were killed. Well, that is certainly an important 
question. And I know our former Secretary of State said, What 
difference at this point does it make? But I think this Libyan man is 
right. We need to be asking why were they killed. And it certainly 
wasn't about a video. And I know that we have got some newspapers that 
are losing viewership or readership and so they are trying as best they 
can before people completely quit reading it to help their next 
candidate for President, I get that. I understand.
  But the fact is these were radical Islamists, al Qaeda-related people 
in the group. There was never a demonstration. It was an attack from 
the very beginning, just as Chris Stevens called and Greg Hicks pointed 
out: we are under attack. There was no indication of a demonstration 
about some stupid video. They were under attack. It was predicted and 
talked about. Some in Egypt were saying if you don't release the blind 
sheikh who was implicit and in prison for the murder of New Yorkers as 
they tried in 1993 to bring down the World Trade Center, they were 
saying you have to start by releasing the blind sheikh or there is 
going to be violence. It wasn't about a video, for goodness sake.

  When the government consumes 25 percent of everything produced in 
America, the government is too big. It needs to be reduced in size. 
Powers need to be returned to the States from which they were usurped. 
We need to give more power and control back to the local government. We 
have got people screaming about the minimum wage. It is outrageous for 
people in this town to tell somebody in San Augustine, Texas, what they 
have to pay, that they have to go to pay $10 or $15 for minimum wage. 
It is outrageous. Some places in the country, that may not be enough as 
the bottom line and isn't, and people are being paid more than that. 
But for teenagers, like I was when I started working, actually before I 
was a teenager I started working, but I started paying into Social 
Security, I guess, when I was 13 or 14, but minimum wage is a great 
place to start. When I went to work as an assistant district attorney 
for Titus, Camp, and Morris Counties, I was getting paid $700 a month. 
It was what they could afford, and I was able to live at home and work 
for that and help those counties. The closer to the facts on the ground 
is the control of a government, then the better the government.
  When the Federal Government here in Washington dictates school 
programs, school tests, it is just wrong. And this isn't an issue of 
Republican or Democrat. I had this discussion with President Bush's 
Secretary of Education because she was violating the Constitution 
because education is not an enumerated power within the Constitution. 
Therefore, under the 10th Amendment, it is reserved to the States and 
people.
  She said if you liked what I was doing in Austin, you ought to love 
what I am doing in Washington. I said, No, when you were in Austin, you 
were acting within the confines of the Constitution. And now you are 
here in Washington, you are acting beyond the Constitution. You are 
mandating that people teach to a test. You got to go to

[[Page H156]]

Gladewater, Texas, with me and go to a special needs school there where 
they got over 120 precious lives. And when one of them for a good day 
can touch something, point to something shiny, to have a Federal 
bureaucrat dictate the kind of test that needs to be given, or in Tyler 
at the St. Louis School where I met a young man, a special needs young 
man, and their goal for the end of the year was if he could put his 
fork in a piece of food and get it to his mouth, but because the 
Federal Government intervened, because they didn't know that special 
needs young man and because they didn't know the kids there in 
Gladewater there at that precious school, they dictate.
  Now, the Secretary of Education said, Oh, but you can get an 
alternative test. And I said, Yeah, and you know what kind of 
alternative test got approved for that young man they were trying to 
teach to feed himself. They wouldn't approve him being able to feed 
himself. No, but they did approve if he would point to a sticker with 
food on it, he could pass his test. Thank you so much Federal 
Government. And that is what we have had with so many of these programs 
that were well intended.
  You want to help a single mom, I want to help a single mom with a 
deadbeat dad not helping at all. But the best way to do it is not to 
lure them into a rut from which they cannot extricate themselves. The 
better policy is to help them get a high school diploma. They are 
better off with daycare than with a handout that encourages them to 
have more and more children out of wedlock. I am not blaming the single 
moms. I am blaming the Federal Government for creating a system that 
after 50 years has taken our nuclear homes that were the backbone of 
this country and gone from between 6 and 7 percent of children being 
born to a single mom in the sixties, and because of this government's 
well-intentioned, but ridiculously stupid, program, we now have over 40 
percent of children being born to single moms, heading toward 50 
percent.

                              {time}  1200

  It is wrongheaded when a government does not help.
  I will tell you, I spent some precious time out at Texas College in 
Tyler, one of the oldest colleges in Texas. It was started as an 
African American college. I used to wonder, I am looking forward--as 
Martin Luther King, Jr. said--to the day when people are judged by the 
content of their character, not the color of their skin. I am looking 
forward to the day when race is not on a form anybody fills out because 
it doesn't matter; it doesn't make any difference. I am looking forward 
to that day.
  But I have learned a lot from Texas College because I have seen young 
African Americans--repeatedly, I have met African Americans--who are 
the first in their family to go to college. It is a great stepping off 
place. It is a great place to start, to break through that ceiling that 
has kept people in poverty.
  I met with and visited with a combined sociology class some time ago 
and talked about this issue of the Federal Government wanting to help, 
but instead luring young single moms into holes they can't get out of. 
Many do, but many can't. I asked them for advice. There were single 
moms there. I was shocked with some of the suggestions they said. They 
said you need to have a drug test on aid for dependent children; you 
need to have a drug test on any kind of welfare; you need to have a 
work requirement on any kind of welfare.
  That was a tough group.
  They said you are not doing enough to push people to reach their 
potential.
  Then when you meet and talk with single moms, African Americans, that 
got lured into a rut, and by the grace of God they are trying to get 
out of that. They are trying to get some college and improve themselves 
and reach their potential, but they feel like the government lured them 
into a rut now they are trying desperately to get out of. We owe them 
better. We owe them a system that doesn't lure them into holes but 
helps them reach for the sky.
  Maybe it would have been better in the '60s to help with daycare if 
somebody has a child, a single mom has a child, because we know from 
study after study you've got a better chance of having a successful 
life if you finish high school. So why not have that as a goal instead 
of luring people into having more and more children.
  The people that I had to face for felony welfare fraud, some may 
think it is a racial issue, but I saw it wasn't at all. Every race, 
creed, color, people got lured into this, and it was wrong. The 
government should not have systems that do that.
  There is another profound statement that Mark Levin has in this book, 
``The Liberty Amendments.'' He points out:

       The individual's liberty, inextricably linked to his 
     private property, is submerged in the quicksand of a 
     government that is aggregating authority and imploding 
     simultaneously.

  What then is the answer? Again, Alexis de Tocqueville offers guidance 
looking back at the Constitutional Convention some 50 years afterwards. 
He observed that:

       It is a novelty in the history of society to see a great 
     people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself, when 
     apprised by the legislature that the wheels of its government 
     are stopped, to see it carefully examine the extent of the 
     evil, and patiently wait 2 whole years until a remedy is 
     discovered, to which it voluntarily submitted without its 
     costing a tear or a drop of blood from mankind.

  It is a profound book. Levin quotes Madison in Federalist 14:

       In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the 
     general government is not to be charged with the whole power 
     of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited 
     to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members 
     of the Republic, but which are not to be attained by the 
     separate provisions of any.

  Then in Federalist 45, he insisted:

       The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the 
     Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to 
     remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

  In Federalist 46, Madison asserted that:

       The powers proposed to be lodged in the Federal Government 
     are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual 
     States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the 
     purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have 
     been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation 
     of the State governments, must, on the most favorable 
     interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the 
     authors of them.

  This is a great book. There is just so much wonderful history from 
our United States history that deserves further looking. The library 
should have the book if people want to read it.
  We are not thinking straight in this town, and there are negotiations 
ongoing with Iran about nuclear weapons, whose leaders have called us 
the ``Great Satan'' that needs to be destroyed, called Israel the 
``Little Satan'' that needs to be destroyed, and they have missiles 
they can put nuclear weapons on top of Israel for its destruction 
creating a new holocaust, millions of lives could be lost. But as our 
friend Prime Minister Netanyahu points out, they are building and they 
have created intercontinental ballistic missiles.
  He is trying to wake the United States up, Netanyahu is, when he is 
saying that they don't need those to take out Israel. They've got 
missiles to take us out. Those intercontinental ballistic missiles are 
for the United States they call the Great Satan. Its leaders believe 
that under their interpretation of prophecy from the Koran that the 
twelfth Imam, al-Mahdi, can emerge or will emerge from chaos. They 
believe that it could be nuclear chaos. So by creating nuclear bombs 
and setting them off, Israel, the United States, Little Satan, Great 
Satan, they can hasten the return of the twelfth Imam to rule over the 
global caliphate.
  When somebody thinks that kind of thought, we need to make sure they 
don't get nukes, and we need to take out anything where they are 
producing nukes. We have the power and ability to do it. Everybody, 
including Russia and China, needs to understand, if we don't take them 
out, they could be launched at Russia and China, because they are led 
by infidels, to Iran's way of thinking, just like the U.S. and Israel 
are to their way of thinking.

  So January 7, there is an article in TheBlaze, Sharona Schwartz. It 
says:

       An Iranian official says that his country needs a nuclear 
     bomb in order to ``put Israel in its place.''
       ``We don't aspire to obtain a nuclear bomb, but it is 
     necessary so we can put Israel in its place.''

  Of course there are plenty of quotes from their leaders that the 
proper place for Israel is ``wiped off the map.''

[[Page H157]]

  ``After arriving in New York''--the article points out ``Rouhani''--
the new President--``again was contacted at his hotel by an unspecified 
White House official.''
  And this is from a parliament member in Iran, Muhammad Nabavian:

       ``I assembled the delegation accompanying me and we decided 
     not to meet with Obama. On Tuesday afternoon after the press 
     conference, they said to me, `why did you humiliate Obama in 
     America?' and I said there was no humiliation. Here I 
     recalled the words of Imam Khomeini who said that one must 
     humiliate the infidel leaders,'' Nabavian reported about 
     Rouhani's description of the events.

  It is very important that the leaders in this country, including our 
President, realize that to these religious fanatic nuts he is an 
infidel leader, we are infidel leaders, and we are worthy of being 
humiliated, and as the leaders of the Great Satan we are worthy of 
being destroyed. That must be understood.
  What has come about as radical Islamist--and I am very careful about 
that, despite what some of the more ignorant in the left wing would say 
in the left-wing media. We don't have to fear moderate Muslims. And I 
am talking about the kind of moderate Muslims that I have befriended in 
Egypt and Afghan, who are the enemy of my enemy, who are the enemy of 
the United States' enemy, who are the enemy of Israel, our ally.
  We can work with them, just as is happening in Egypt right now where 
moderate Muslims were sickened by the Muslim Brotherhood's burning of 
churches, killing of Christians, persecution of Christians. That is 
something that former President Morsi is on trial for. And the interim 
President right now is a former judge, so we had some things in common 
as we spoke not long ago there in Egypt.
  Yet, as the odds are getting stacked farther and higher against 
Israel's existence, and as we are demanding Israel give away more of 
its land as Palestinian leaders continue to say they are not agreeing 
to anything, they are not agreeing to Israel's right to even exist as a 
Jewish nation, as a place where Jews can avoid another holocaust like 
in World War II, they are not even willing to recognize that, how can 
there ever be peace? As I said personally to the Palestinian's former 
prime minister, how can you expect peace when you won't even recognize 
Israel's right to exist as a Jewish nation?
  So they want Israel to keep giving away more and more land, and every 
time--going back to the very inception of Israel, 1,000, 1,600, 1,800 
years before Muhammad was born, the actual founding of Israel, going 
back that early, any time Israel has given away land trying to buy 
peace, that land ultimately gets used as a staging area from which to 
attack it. They are about, I hope, to learn that lesson.
  So what do we have going on here in the United States now? Well, 
Caroline Glick has a great article called: ``Column One: The Left 
Against Zion.'' This is from December 19. She says:

       This week has been a big one for the anti-Israel movement. 
     In the space of a few days, two quasi-academic 
     organizations--the American Studies Association and the 
     Native American and Indigenous Studies Association--have 
     launched boycotts against Israeli universities. Their 
     boycotts follow a similar one announced in April by the Asian 
     Studies Association.

  These groups' actions have not taken place in isolation. They are of 
a piece with ever-escalating acts of anti-Israel agitation in college 
campuses throughout the United States.

                              {time}  1215

  I would interject that it is sickening and incredible to me to see 
anti-Semitism growing just the way it did before the 1930s and 1940s 
when over 6 million Jews were mercilessly, brutally killed--and we are 
seeing it arise. When I learned about the Holocaust and when I went to 
Germany, through what I had learned and read and seen, I could never 
have imagined. Thank God we could never have that happen during my 
lifetime. Now I am watching the seeds of anti-Semitism, of anti-
Israel--of people wanting to wipe them off the map, of those who are 
proposing another Holocaust.
  Then we have pseudo intellectual wannabes at universities where they 
no longer allow true diversity of thought and discussion that made them 
originally great, which allowed them originally to have liberals there 
get in charge, and now they cut off so often conservative speech. It 
used to be in universities, even as conservative as Texas A&M was when 
I was there, that we had many liberal speakers, and I enjoyed meeting 
and debating with some of them, with some of the greats in the country. 
Now, even at Texas A&M, they are careful not to invite people who are 
too conservative because you don't want to tick off the Faculty Senate. 
Like most universities, it has gotten very, very liberal.
  In Caroline Glick's article she points out:

       Every week brings a wealth of stories about new cases of 
     aggressive anti-Israel activism. At the University of 
     Michigan last week, thousands of students were sent fake 
     eviction notices from the university's housing office. A pro-
     Palestinian group distributed them in dorms across campus to 
     disseminate the blood libel that Israel is carrying out mass 
     expulsions of Palestinians.
       At Swarthmore College, leftist anti-Israel Jewish students 
     who control Hillel are insisting on using Hillel's good 
     offices to disseminate and legitimate anti-Israel slanders; 
     and the left's doctrinaire insistence that Israel is the root 
     of all evil is not limited to campuses.
       At New York's 92nd Street Y, commentary editor John 
     Podhoretz was booed and hissed by the audience for trying to 
     explain why the ASA's just-announced boycott of Israel was an 
     obscene act of bigotry.

  It is a great article. I don't have time to read it all, but she 
points out:

       This week, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz retired 
     after 50 years on the law faculty. His exit, the same week as 
     the ASA and the NAISA announced their boycotts of Israeli 
     universities, symbolized the marginalization of the pro-
     Israel left that Dershowitz represented.
       For years, Dershowitz has been a nonentity in leftist 
     circles. His place at the table was usurped by anti-Israel 
     Jews like Peter Beinart, and now Beinart is finding himself 
     increasingly challenged by anti-Semitic Jews like Max 
     Blumenthal.
       The progression is unmistakable.

  People need to wake up and understand that this kind of thing has all 
happened before, and when people don't recognize it, it happens again 
in history. God help us that it doesn't happen while our generation is 
in charge, but these growing acts of anti-Semitism, anti-Israel 
continue to progress by so-called ``Progressives,'' making it seem as 
if this is another apartheid like in South Africa, which was so unfair, 
racially so wrong in South Africa. It got corrected. This is not the 
same thing at all. This is a group of people who have been persecuted 
throughout their history, having a country where they have a longer 
history of right to that area than any other people existing today.
  Yet, as universities, the so-called ``left'' become more loud and 
more vocal in their hatred and anger, I have wondered: If Iran dropped 
a nuke on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, if Iran killed a million Jews in 
Israel, have those leftists--those anti-Semitic, anti-Israel folks at 
universities--gotten so far from decency that they would applaud 
Israelis, Jews being killed by the millions in Israel? I wonder. I 
wonder if there would be any reaction like there has been in history, 
like there was in Germany when Jews were being killed? They deserved 
it. They were the problem in this country.
  Rationalization is a great thing, and it is a dangerous thing.
  People who were in Germany, who lived through the Holocaust don't 
want to talk about it because they cannot believe that they got sucked 
into that group dynamic that allowed them to be so inhuman and so 
callous that they didn't care about the extinction of Jews in Germany. 
I really don't know the answer. These anti-Israeli groups in 
universities like to think they are diverse, but yet they go after and 
destroy anybody who attempts to debate them. Would they cheer if Jews 
and Israelis were killed by Iran?
  I hope they will wake up to what is happening at these universities, 
but here again, love and money can be the root of all evil, and we see 
universities across this country getting more and more money from 
Middle Eastern countries that say, Hey, by the way, you need to teach a 
course on Islamophobia or at least have a seminar, and talk about 
anybody who raises issues about radical Islam, like the author in The 
Washington Times, Husain, who just lied completely about things that I 
had said. He just lied. He made stuff up. He didn't do his homework. 
Yet those kinds of things are being talked about and taught at 
universities.

[[Page H158]]

  We have got to get back to having real debate. Some people think, 
when I get upset, it means I hate somebody. I don't. I come from a 
family where we fuss at each other tooth and nail. We still love each 
other and stand by each other. I heard that this was attributed to 
Johnson, as President, but we had a pastor in Mount Pleasant, Texas, in 
1953, who said it to my parents: if two people agree on everything, one 
of them is unnecessary. The same is true here in Congress. If we all 
agree on everything, then all but one are unnecessary. We don't need a 
Congress. We don't need advisors. If one person knows everything, then 
just let him make all the decisions, but that is not the case in this 
fallen world. We need to hear from everybody. Debate is a good thing, 
and it used to be at universities and can be again if they will allow 
all voices to be heard.

  I have one other story here from CNS News:

       Afghanistan will resume being a terrorist haven when U.S. 
     troops depart.

  That is going to happen. I have been talking about that for a number 
of years, and it doesn't have to happen if we would simply grant the 
people of Afghanistan what the Founders originally gave us. We have 
messed it up, but they originally gave us a government where the States 
were the most powerful entity. As my moderate Muslim friends in 
Afghanistan have said, and as former Vice President Massoud has said, 
and others: if you will just help us push Karzai to let us have an 
amendment in our constitution that allows us to elect our governors, 
elect our mayors, get our own police chiefs, govern our own regions, 
our own state areas--if you will let us do that, we can keep the 
Taliban out.
  I mentioned it before, but when I asked, ``What makes you think we 
could exert that kind of pressure?'' they informed me that out of about 
a $12.5 billion government budget in Afghanistan, the Afghans only 
provide about $1.5 billion. The rest is provided by foreign countries, 
and most of that is the United States. Today, if this President says 
you either let the states elect their own governors and mayors and pick 
their own police chiefs--that is today--or we will cut off every dime 
going to Afghanistan, I would bet that would be the day they would get 
started and that they would get an amendment to their constitution, and 
they would become more of a democratic republic like we started out as, 
perhaps even more than we are now.
  We need to do that for them. We don't need to let more American lives 
be killed and be taken in Afghanistan. That doesn't have to happen. It 
didn't have to happen. Even though Secretary Gates said that he didn't 
believe the President was really convinced the surge was a good idea in 
Afghanistan, he still sent more troops, and what people haven't been 
talking about for a long time is that 75 percent of the people of the 
American soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan--soldiers, 
sailors, marines, airmen--all of them--have been killed while President 
Obama has been Commander in Chief.
  I did not think President Bush did the right thing by sending tens of 
thousands of American troops in after the Taliban was defeated with 
fewer than 500 Americans in supporting the Northern Alliance, but we 
became occupiers. It was a mistake by the Bush administration, I 
believe, and then a mistake that President Obama inherited, and it got 
worse. We don't have to leave and have the blood of our soldiers--of 
our military--cry out as we leave Afghanistan and as the Taliban takes 
back over. Let us, Madam Speaker, help Afghanistan to root out the evil 
in its own country. Let's help them get a constitution that let's them 
root it out for themselves. That is how we should be doing foreign 
policy.
  May God awaken the universities that were once so diverse and so 
great to understanding that they should not, cannot--I hope and pray do 
not--continue to foster this anti-Semitism, this anti-Israeli 
sentiment, that is growing, that might someday cheer when Israelis are 
nuked.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________