[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 113 (Tuesday, June 29, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E716-E717]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          PERSONAL EXPLANATION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. LOUIE GOHMERT

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 29, 2021

  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I was unable to vote on June 29, 2021 due 
to an invitation from the Governor of Texas to travel to the border to 
observe the ongoing crisis that is happening there. Had I been present, 
I would have voted as follows: YES on Roll Call No. 196.
  I am exceedingly concerned with the Speaker's determination to pass 
H.R. 3005, To direct the Joint Committee on the Library to replace the 
bust of Roger Brooke Taney in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the 
United States Capitol with a bust of Thurgood Marshall to be obtained 
by the Joint Committee on the Library and to remove certain statues 
from areas of the United States Capitol which are

[[Page E717]]

accessible to the public, to remove all statues of individuals who 
voluntarily served the Confederate States of America from display in 
the United States Capitol, and for other purposes. This bill is 
Cultural Marxism brought to the House floor for a vote.
  This bill attempts to strip individual states of their right to 
choose the statues they are paying for. In doing so, it seeks to erase 
their history--the bad, the good, and everything in between, that 
informs whom we've been and whom we are, as well as where we've been, 
so we can aptly navigate where we are going. As George Orwell 
presciently foreshadowed, ``Every record has been destroyed or 
falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, 
every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been 
altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. 
History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which 
the Party is always right.''
  But is the Party always right? Surely it is not. This point 
highlights another grievous flaw in H.R. 3005. Although it purports to 
cleanse the Capitol complex of Confederate statues and busts, in doing 
so it actually removes only Democrat statues and busts. Yes, Democrats 
are removing their Democrat forefathers for the sin of their slavery, 
or other support for the Confederacy, committed in times past.
  So why vote YES? Because having fought this battle for a state's 
right to choose--warning about the dangers of arbitrarily banishing 
history from our midst--I am sick and tired of defending states' rights 
so Democrats can try to rewrite history and say Republicans are 
defending racists. We are doing no such thing. In fact, I've even gone 
further and tried to get an amendment made in order that reveals the 
dirty secret of just how racist, pro-slavery, and anti-freedom 
Democrats have been in the past. They want their own statues removed 
for two unspoken reasons: (1) People won't look up their former heroes 
and find out how racist Democrats have been, and (2) A move to Marxism 
requires destruction of history first. If people don't know their 
nation's true history, they're more easily duped into accepting a 
totalitarian government. So, if Democrats want to remove all Democrat 
statues and busts in the Capitol, I will not stand in their way.