[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 14 (Monday, January 25, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E65]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





  PASSING THROUGH THE FIERY TRIALS OF DEMOCRACY TO SAVE AND RENEW OUR 
                                REPUBLIC

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, January 25, 2021

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the Committees 
on the Judiciary and on Homeland Security, as the descendant of 
patriotic and heroic veterans who risked their lives to defend our 
nation and our freedoms, as a parent with the fervent hope and 
determination to pass on this great democracy to the next generation, 
and as a citizen of the greatest republic in world history, I rise to 
reflect on the state of our democracy as it is about to open a new 
chapter in the remarkable story of America.
  In 1776, the Framers declared the self-evident and later the 
universal truth that all persons are created equal and endowed by their 
Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness. As important, the Framers declared that ``to secure these 
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power 
from the consent of the governed.'' This genius of self-government is 
the Framers' gift to us and America's gift to the world, and for nearly 
250 years the world has looked upon the United States with wonder, awe, 
and envy not just for its awesome powers and achievements, but for 
being the exemplar to which most freedom-loving nations aspire.
  But as President Lincoln reminded us at Gettysburg, the proposition 
that a people can govern themselves is not to be taken for granted; it 
is a proposition that will be tested time and again and it for us, the 
living, to highly resolve to commit ourselves to the great task always 
before us, that government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people not perish from the earth.
  As Thomas Paine said in his time, the past four years were times that 
tried one's soul. The nation was tested, severely so, by what can only 
be described as the modern-day Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: a 
deadly pandemic, economic devastation unseen since the Great 
Depression, social justice unrest, and the very real threat of 
authoritarianism. While the threat posed by these challenges are still 
with us to varying extent, we can all rejoice that the nation withstood 
the challenge, e pluribus unum, by standing together as ``We The 
People.'' President Lincoln reminded us that in times of testing and 
challenge that ``the fiery trial through which we pass will mark us 
down in honor or dishonor until the latest generation'' but that so 
long as the people ``retain their virtue and vigilance, no 
administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very 
seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.''
  And Lincoln was right, for on Election Day 2020, Americans by a 
substantial majority, voted to withhold consent to govern from an 
incumbent administration and confer it upon another. That act of self-
government and sovereign expression was solemnized on January 20, 2021, 
at noon when Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris took the oath of 
office as the 46th President and 49th Vice-President of the United 
States.
  The Philadelphia Miracle of 1789 endures but only because we 
Americans resolve that it does and work to make it so. The President 
takes the oath of office pledging to preserve, protect, and defend the 
Constitution. As does every one of my congressional colleagues, I have 
sacredly pledged true faith and allegiance in defending the 
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and to well and 
faithfully execute the duties of the office I hold. I do this ever 
mindful that the purpose of our form of government is ``to form a more 
perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to 
provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to 
secure the blessings of liberty for posterity.''
  But we all have a responsibility to preserve and strengthen this 
constitutional republic and pass it on to the next generation by 
engaging in robust, lawful, and peaceful civic activity to hold our 
government to account and to peaceably assemble when necessary to 
petition for a redress of grievances as shown by the Rev. Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington, following the example of 
Mahatma Gandhi; by John Lewis and the Civil Rights foot soldiers at the 
Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; by Elizabeth Cady Staton and 
Lucretia Mott at Seneca Falls; by Cesar Chavez leading the fight for 
human dignity of farmworkers, and by Black Lives Matter demonstrators 
protesting inequalities in the criminal justice system. For the work of 
democracy is never complete, our union is always in the process of 
being made more perfect.
  Americans have suffered, endured, and survived much pain and 
heartbreak over the past four years. But Psalms 30:5 teaches that 
``weeping lasteth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'' So, let 
us all be of good cheer, for tomorrow, at the end of morning, a new day 
dawns in America with the inauguration of President Biden and Vice-
President Harris and our collective journey towards the beloved 
community continues inexorably forward.

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