[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 151 (Thursday, September 19, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H7778]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being 
recognized here to speak on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives. I come to the floor this morning, Mr. Speaker, to 
address a topic, and most of the words that I say will be from an 
article written by Roger Scruton, who is an author from Great Britain. 
He is commenting on a new book by Douglas Murray, titled ``The Madness 
of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity.''
  Some of this hits home so much, and it has so much to do with 
America, that I thought it was important I address this here this 
morning.
  He says: ``In every period of history, therefore, there have been 
opinions and customs that are dangerous to question . . . but our 
situation in Western democracies today is a novel one. . . . The old 
customs have been torn asunder by a culture of repudiation, which 
encourages people to shape their lives according to an `identity' of 
their own.''
  Socialization no longer means what it used to mean. It means now 
becoming who you are without regard to the framework that existed in 
the civilization and the culture prior. ``The punishments for saying, 
thinking, or implying the wrong thing . . . are real, serious, and 
largely impossible to deflect.''
  That means that ``the archive of your crimes is stored in cyberspace, 
and however much you may have confessed to them and sworn to change, 
they will pursue you for the rest of your life, just as long as someone 
has an interest in drawing attention to them. And when the mob turns on 
you, it is with a pitiless intensity that bears no relation to the 
objective seriousness of your fault. A word out of place, a hasty 
judgment, a slip of the tongue, whatever the fault might be, it is 
sufficient, once picked upon, to put you beyond the pale of human 
sympathy.''
  This is reflected in the book ``The Madness of Crowds.''
  ``The emerging world of censorship is a world without forgiveness . . 
. in which the real virtues and vices that govern our conduct are 
ignored altogether'' or are decided to be irrelevant.
  ``The crimes for which we are judged are existential crimes. Through 
speaking in the wrong way, you display one of the phobias or isms,'' or 
they presume that is the case, ``that show you to be beyond acceptable 
humanity. You are a homophobe, an Islamophobe, a white supremacist, or 
a racist, and no argument can refute these accusations once they have 
been made.''
  Even ``your accusers are not interested in your deeds; they are 
interested in you,'' and what they are interested in is ``whether or 
not you are `one of us,' '' meaning actually one of them. ``Your faults 
cannot be overcome by voluntary action, since they adhere to the kind 
of thing that you are, and you reveal what you are in the words that 
define you,'' as defined by your critics.
  ``These words may be taken out of context, even doctored to mean the 
opposite of what you said''--that is true with the author and certainly 
true with me--``but this will not affect the verdict, since there is no 
objective trial, no `case for the defense,' no due process. You are 
accused by the mob, examined by the mob, and condemned by the mob, and 
if you have brought this on yourself, then,'' they say, ``you have only 
yourself to blame. For the mob is by nature innocent. It washes its own 
conscience in a flow of collective indignation, and by joining it, you 
make yourself safe,'' which is one of the reasons we see an epidemic of 
virtue signaling here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker.

  ``The spirit of the mob has entered not only the language of public 
debate but also the sources of information and the institutions of 
decisionmaking. Censorship begins in the media themselves.''
  Cyberspace is censored and is controlled by about four major 
companies. George Orwell predicted this, but I think it has eclipsed 
even his magnificent imagination and the reality that we are dealing 
with today.
  ``Murray gives riveting examples of the way in which''--I will use 
this example--``whiteness has become a moral fault in the eyes of 
identity warriors on the American campus.'' They now openly ``condemn 
people for the color of their skin,'' provided that it is white. The 
art of taking offense, ``whole sections of the university curriculum 
are devoted to explaining to students that words, arguments, 
comparisons, even questions,'' rhetorical or not, ``are `offensive,' 
regardless of the intention with which they are used,'' or, actually, 
the language, the precise definition of the language.
  ``Invariably, the offense is given by the old majority culture and is 
taken on behalf of some privileged minority.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is a shorthand version of what is going on in this 
country, what is going on in this Congress, what is going on in the 
media.
  And I submit this, that we don't any longer have an objective news 
media. That center that used to be the truth has been completely, 
almost completely, vacated. Much of it has gone to the left. Some has 
gone to the right. And that peace of being able to pick up a newspaper 
and read it and believe that it is true today is no longer true today. 
And the American civilization must come to grips with this and go to 
original sources, come to our own conclusions, adjust our civilization 
and our culture. If we fail to do so, we will be pitted against each 
other for a long time to come.

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