[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 160 (Thursday, September 27, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9143-H9146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            UNIFYING AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Russell) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, he was a soldier who had given 45 years of 
service to his country. 222 years ago, this month, he crafted a 
farewell address to the Nation. In it, he made no attempt to recount 
his time as a businessman, warrior, lawmaker, founder, Framer, 
battlefield commander, or President of a United States that he, more 
than any other, helped to create.

                              {time}  1700

  Instead, George Washington, chose to offer ``disinterested warnings 
of a parting friend,'' which he felt were, important to the permanency 
of our felicity as a people.
  Leaders today departing public service might recount their personal 
journey and thank those who shared some of their path. Washington's 
final words were nothing of the sort. He chose, instead, to look far 
into the future and address all of us, the future. None of us can know 
it. We get occasional glimpses of it by talking to older people, those 
a little further down the road.
  From them, we gain wisdom and counsel. Yet, sadly, each generation 
imagines that it faces unprecedented problems only to dismiss the 
counsels of the generation or two before them. We find it tough to 
absorb the Wisdom of Solomon when he stated, ``There is nothing new 
under the Sun.'' Another way to put it is this: Times change, people 
don't.
  Taking this truth, what would George Washington say to us if he were 
here today? What counsels would he give our Nation? What relevance 
would it have? Fortunately, in this gleaming alabaster city that bears 
his name, we have rich archives to continue to hear from George 
Washington. Whether we are wise enough to heed Washington, is another 
matter altogether.
  Surprisingly, he gave no recommendation for us to love liberty, as 
liberty is in the very fiber of the human race, and was certainly 
heightened among the early Americans whose efforts had recently secured 
it. Instead, Washington made a vital observation while trying to give 
future Americans a heads-up. Here it is: Liberty does not secure 
independence.
  Washington knew a fallen mankind would flourish in liberty, and as 
such, Americans would be enticed to reduce and erode our independence 
for temporary gain or perceived future benefit. Instead of liberty, he 
identified unity as the essential factor to retain American 
independence.
  At first ponder, this seems counterintuitive. After all, unified 
efforts require a certain accommodation to one another for greater 
good, necessitating an occasional deferential voluntary reduction in 
one's personal liberty.
  Unity achieves result without reducing liberty through power, pen, 
statute, or sword. For these reasons, Washington told America that 
unity was the, ``main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, 
the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your 
safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly 
prize.''
  Even after 242 years as a Republic, we still embody this idea in our 
national motto: e pluribus unum, a Latin phrase meaning, out of many--
one.
  We see it in our pledge, with terms like ``one Nation,'' 
``indivisible,'' but what of our behavior today? We still, on occasion, 
employ the words, but we deploy actions that could better be described 
as e pluribus pluribus. One hyphenated nation and divisible.
  Washington warned of it: ``But as it is easy to foresee that, from 
different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, 
many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this 
truth . . . that you should properly estimate the immense value of your 
national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you 
should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; 
accustoming yourselves to think . . . of it as . . . your political 
safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous 
anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it 
can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first 
dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from 
the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the 
various parts.''
  Washington's words today read like stinging rebuke to all Americans. 
Instead of guarding our institutions jealously with cordial, habitual, 
and immovable attachment, we in these august Chambers across every 
aisle allow disruption to displace discourse, polarization to pass for 
politics, and resistance to replace result.
  Mr. Speaker, we stand condemned, but not irredeemable. Like any first 
step, admitting the problem is the path to recovery. How did we allow 
these congressional Chambers to suffer such infiltration? Our own 
history contains sharp lessons of discord, the loss of our own 
lawmakers by caning and shooting--sometimes by our own selves; a 
preference for conflict over Constitution, and a division so great that 
we ended up destroying each other on America's fields and farms from 
Gettysburg to Vicksburg.
  Washington's warnings went unheeded a mere 100 years after he gave 
them. We self-corrected, but only after great harm to ourselves. It has 
been 150 years since we nearly destroyed each other. Are we on any more 
secure a path? It would appear from our treatment of each other and our 
view of our own Nation's future that we are tempted to walk an old 
path. If that be the case, then taking counsel from George Washington 
might be a timely exercise.
  With regard to unity, we must realize we are all in the ship of state 
together. Crashing it on the rocks as we fight each other for control 
of the helm will deny any safe harbor we wish to obtain. Washington 
believed that we must view our unity as a sacred tie that links 
together the various parts.
  ``Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a 
right to concentrate your affections. The name `American,' which 
belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just 
pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local 
discriminations. With slight shades of difference you have the same 
religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have a common 
cause fought in triumph together; the independence and liberty you 
possess are the work of joint counsels and joint efforts of common 
dangers, sufferings and successes. . . . your union ought to be 
considered as a main prop to your liberty, and that the love of one 
ought to endear you to the preservatio of the other.''

  If the unity of our people be the main prop of our liberty, what was 
it that George Washington believed would knock out that prop?
  Warning number one and number two from George Washington, 
Geographical and Party Disunion: Washington believed, ``a government 
for the whole is indispensable.'' When various parts of the country 
come to feel that they are more important than the others, they will 
``acquire influence within particular districts to misrepresent the 
opinions and aims of other districts.''
  Disregarding government for some regional or geographical preference 
to suit our own interest is a sure way to erode our unity. Washington's 
view of our government was to show ``Respect for its authority, 
compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties 
enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.''
  Washington believed that the Constitution and its authentic amending 
was an act by the people upon themselves, and that every American would 
naturally have an obligation to obey the established government for the 
experiment even to work.

[[Page H9144]]

  ``All obstructions to the execution of the laws . . . designs to 
direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular constituted 
authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and a fatal 
tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and 
extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the 
Nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising 
minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of 
different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the 
ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the 
organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and 
modified by mutual interests.''
  Washington foresaw that geographical interests could coalesce around 
party preferences, with urban and rural, coastal and inland, northern 
and southern, eastern and western, forming the basis by which we would 
try to empower ourselves with party faction to obtain the interests of 
one rather than the interests of all.
  For our government to work for the whole Nation, he encouraged us to 
``remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the 
true character of governments as of other human institutions.''
  For example, we understand that it takes time for a child to become 
an adult, or that an adult, in time, must master his or her skills and 
experience to succeed in work or creativity. Yet, somehow, we imagine 
that the difficult things of government can be solved in months, when 
in the natural flow of life, it takes years and decades to secure true 
accomplishment.
  Even if we were able to accept this wisdom, we find ourselves 
provoked to what Washington called, ``the spirit of revenge'' among 
parties as one faction would alternate domination over the other. 
Washington warned that it was, ``natural to party dissension, which in 
different ages and countries has perpetuated the most horrid 
enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length 
to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries 
which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and 
repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the 
chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his 
competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own 
elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.''
  Washington warned that party faction would always distract public 
cooperation, weakening our government's ability to function. Loyalty to 
party over the Nation would, in his phrases, agitate communities, 
kindle animosity, foment occasional riot and insurrection, and open the 
door for foreign influence and corruption to weaken the Nation.
  He also warned of those using patriotism and liberty as their 
justification to stress the Nation, rising in their deep conviction 
with the spirit of party and urgency. Admitting that there would be 
some indulgence for this, if not favor, he warned that such a spirit 
was not to be encouraged.
  He called upon all Americans to not fan these embers as they were ``a 
fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its 
bursting into flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.''
  Warning number three, The Encroachment of National Leaders: 
Washington warned that national leaders ``to confine themselves within 
their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of 
the powers of one department to encroach upon another . . . The spirit 
of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments 
in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real 
despotism . . . If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or 
modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, 
let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution 
designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, 
in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary 
weapon by which free governments are destroyed.''
  Warning number four, Religious Abandonment: For all of Washington's 
warnings about political and party faction, his remedy was very clear. 
So clear, in fact, that its absence, he said, would guarantee that our 
Nation would lack human rights.
  ``Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political 
prosperity, religion and morality are dispensable supports. . . . Let 
it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, 
for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which 
are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us 
with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained 
without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined 
education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both 
forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of 
religious principle. . . . virtue or morality is a necessary spring of 
popular government. Who . . . can look with indifference upon attempts 
to shake the foundation of the fabric?''

                              {time}  1715

  Warning number five, Public Debt and Weakened Defense: Washington had 
much to say about public credit. He believed it should be used as 
sparingly as possible. He also believed one sure way to preserve the 
national treasury would be to promote peace, but also to fund the 
government on time. Proper funding would secure the Nation, preventing 
greater cost to repel danger and burden the Nation with debt. Toward 
all national debts, Washington reminded all Americans that it took 
revenue to pay them.
  ``The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but 
it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. To facilitate to 
them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should 
practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts, there must 
be revenue; that to have revenue, there must be taxes; that no taxes 
can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and 
unpleasant.''
  For these reasons, Washington warned that our motives must be 
decisive in the expense of government and to choose wisely the objects 
that we should fund. To ignore this would weaken our Nation as a whole.
  Warning number six, Entangling and Favored Alliances: Washington's 
view of foreign policy was to: ``Observe good faith and justice towards 
all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and 
morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not 
equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened nation, and 
at no distant period, a great nation, to give mankind the magnanimous 
and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice 
and benevolence.''
  Washington believed good morality would naturally create good foreign 
policy, fairness, and impartiality. He urged to treat all nations 
equally, initially. He warned that adverse relations with nations would 
result in poor policy and unnecessary conflict. Unnecessary favor to 
particular nations might pull us into conflict with some other where we 
may have had no quarrel at all.
  Washington was passionate here: ``Against the insidious wiles of 
foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens, the 
jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history 
and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful 
foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be 
impartial.''
  His final warning, warning number seven, Partiality in Commerce: 
Washington instructed: ``The great rule of conduct for us in regard to 
foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with 
them as little political connection as possible.''
  Washington believed strong relations could be built upon commerce, 
keeping us in a fair and neutral position, preventing entanglement in 
disputes between other nations. He urged to steer clear of permanent 
alliances, but, rather, that ``we may safely trust to temporary 
alliances for extraordinary emergencies.''
  Washington argued commerce should be equal and impartial, neither 
seeking nor granting exclusive favors; to consult the natural course of 
things; to handle gently the natural streams of commerce; to force 
nothing; to define the rights of our merchants; to enter upon 
agreements in a temporary fashion, recognizing that from time to time 
such commerce could be abandoned or modified as needs and circumstances 
might dictate.

[[Page H9145]]

  Washington foresaw that, if we expected disinterested favors from 
other nations without an equal benefit, there would be an accounting. 
He warned: ``There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate 
upon real favors from nation to nation.''
  George Washington had no illusions that his warnings would endure to 
control the Nation's passions. He did hope, however, they ``may be 
productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may 
now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn 
against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the 
impostures of pretended patriotism.''
  So where do we stand, Mr. Speaker, as a nation in these areas of 
warning?
  How are we doing on geographical and party disunion?
  We stand guilty of it. The average American citizen has only been to 
8 of her 50 States, and our national leaders and our own people 
disrespect our Nation's Capitol as a swamp.
  We see coastal cities referring to interior rural towns as ``flyover 
country,'' not realizing that nearly all of their food comes from it, 
while rural areas declaring coastal regions would not be missed if they 
simply fell into the ocean, not realizing that these areas represent 
the bulk of national trade and economy.
  We see Americans electing the most polarized to the left or to the 
right, sending them to work in Washington, D.C., wondering why they 
can't get along to get things done when they get here.
  We see elected leaders calling for disruption and resistance rather 
than discourse and result.
  We see chairs thrown through campus windows because we cannot abide 
free speech.
  We see history expunged because we cannot abide free thought.
  We have abandoned accommodation, bypassed toleration, encouraged 
isolation, organized intimidation, and are set to pursue a path to 
castigation.
  What is next? Elimination of our Republic?
  We must get reacquainted as Americans with unity, with the idea that 
the Nation comes before region, before party, before self. A republic 
is a mutual enterprise. We must relearn how to keep it.
  How are we doing on Washington's warning of national leaders 
encroaching on each other's branch of government or each other's 
business?
  We complain of judges legislating from benches while we judge from 
our legislatures.
  We see executive branches move by power of decree rather than by 
power of consent.
  We see people ignore Federal authority while demanding Federal aid.
  We have eroded respected institutions as elected leaders abandon 
civil conduct in hearings, confusing disruption, disrespect, and 
division somehow with democracy. We have deluded ourselves that 
rudeness is now a form of representation.

  If we cannot respect these hallowed institutions that we ourselves, 
as Americans, control, how can we possibly receive respect in return 
from our fellow citizens as we look to lead government?
  If we spent as much effort to watch our own lanes and make government 
business efficient rather than inflammatory, we might just restore some 
respect to the greatest constitutional republic that has ever existed. 
And, Mr. Speaker, it starts with us.
  And how about Washington's warning on expecting morality without 
religion?
  We have traded accommodation for castigation, abandoning the very 
religious principles adorning all 13 of our original State 
constitutions, our own Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and 
Bill of Rights.
  Every Chamber, hall, ceiling, nook, and corner of our Capitol is 
adorned with these foundational beliefs. In this very Chamber, ``In God 
We Trust'' is over the Speaker's podium, and 97 percent of the Members 
of Congress claim these principles in their personal beliefs. Why then 
have we become silent on free exercise of religion guaranteed in our 
Constitution?
  We have imagined that we can show respect without being respectful.
  We have encouraged and exchanged truth for a lie and now wonder why 
people are so uncivil to one another, and why we have faded hope, 
unclear vision, purpose, or reason to be a force for good in the world 
as a United States.
  Contrary to Washington's warning, we imagine we can have morality 
without the free exercise of religion. We foolishly believe we can fix 
moral problems with political solutions. I am of the belief we need to 
ask God's forgiveness.
  What of Washington's warning on public debt, $20 trillion and 
counting?
  We demand thrift from each other but not from ourselves in our 
personal pocketbooks. The problem is so great today, but not greater 
than our people if we lead by our individual examples.
  We, the nationally elected leaders, are a reflection of America as a 
whole. Until Americans demand fiscal discipline in themselves, it will 
be a long wait to expect it from those whom we elect.
  We, the people, have put ourselves into this situation by making 
demands of government to pay for all of our shortcomings. At some 
point, that payment becomes due. We must ask less from the government 
and more from ourselves, solving our problems locally, together, 
without an invitation for government control.
  What of Washington's warning on alliances and trade?
  Rather than a fair and bilateral approach to nations, we have 
entangled ourselves in multinational permanent agreements on trade, 
without the vision to think that the circumstances may change.
  We have pledged long-term favored status by treaty as opposed to 
short-term agreements and objectives. We have a moral obligation to 
honor the agreements we have enjoined, but we would do well to heed 
Washington's counsel to approach foreign relations commercially and 
have as little political connection to them as possible.
  Mr. Speaker, George Washington's counsel is sorely needed today. We 
stand guilty in all seven of his warnings. We are guilty but not 
irredeemable. Americans have a history of self-correction. 
Unfortunately, it often comes with some great distress or disaster. We 
can and must heed Washington's warnings now and correct by choice 
rather than by circumstance.
  As a combat infantryman, a warrior, returning home from more than two 
decades of personal service, who now has a political life, I have asked 
myself this question:
  How did we as Americans allow our voice to be co-opted by self-
proclaimed cynics and critics on both sides of the political spectrum 
who have divided our great Nation?
  When did American zeal for innovation, sweat, and determination 
become replaced with intimidation, threat, and extermination of 
meaningful dialogue by pathetic keyboard commandos eating their bags of 
Cheese Puffs while sunken into their couches?
  America has never been built on the labor and counsel of cynics and 
critics. Americans, we need to wake up. It is time to rekindle that 
spirit that united our country, ended enslavement, enriched our land, 
advanced our arts and sciences, granted women's suffrage, protested 
inequality, and protected the defenseless.
  Americans know the difference between what is evil and what is good.

                              {time}  1730

  The question we must now ask is whether we will unite and continue to 
live free or continue to attack ourselves, give way to cynicism, and 
watch America's liberty and place in the world die.
  Thank God America is still full of men and women who know it is not 
the cynic and critic who dig the ditch, teach the child, inspire the 
solutions, or create the future.
  It is time for Americans to put America before self again, to 
inspire, to lead, to unify, and to sacrifice. It starts with each of us 
sacrificing a few things, sacrifice doubt, sacrifice anxiety, sacrifice 
cynicism.
  America cannot allow warriors like me to come home from a decade of 
fighting and war to see our Republic overcome by the self-indulgent, 
the divisive, and the visionless.
  As visionary as we Americans and lovers of liberty claim to be, we 
will make little headway if our only answers to our friends and 
neighbors are mere sideline snipes about what is wrong with this 
country.

[[Page H9146]]

  Are we so shortsighted that we cannot accommodate dialogue, exchange 
ideas, and show some deference and respect to one another and rebuild 
our Nation?
  It is time for the American people to embrace what is right about our 
wonderful country, not what is wrong with it. Let us heed Washington's 
warnings and get to work.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________