[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 173 (Thursday, November 21, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H6177-H6181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCEPTS THAT ARE INCONVENIENT TO THE COUNTRY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky
(Mr. Rogers), my good friend.
{time} 1215
Honoring Neil Middleton for His Distinguished Service
Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Neil
Middleton for his distinguished and award-winning career in journalism,
as a longtime trusted news broadcaster and vice president of WYMT-TV, a
CBS affiliate in Hazard, Kentucky.
Broadcasting from the heart of Kentucky's Appalachian region, the
station's call letters, WYMT, stand for We're Your Mountain Television.
It is much more than an acronym. It is the station's mission.
WYMT-TV has become synonymous with the very region it serves, thanks
in large part to the leadership and journalistic integrity of Neil
Middleton and those who blazed a trail for news coverage and weather
alerts in one of the most rural areas of the United States.
In an expansive region separated by mountainous terrain, national
media outlets have only made their way to Appalachia after major
disasters, while others have blistered our communities by drudging up
negative stereotypes that have misrepresented our beloved hometowns
that are filled with hardworking, innovative, and extremely talented
people.
As both well-known and unknown reporters from around the country have
breezed in and out of our region for 15 seconds of fame, it is WYMT
that has earned the trust of southern and eastern Kentuckians since the
station first signed onto the air in 1985.
They have not only provided lifesaving weather alerts during
catastrophic floods and tornadoes but they
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have also followed their news coverage with fundraising telethons,
using the power of the airwaves to collect vital donations to help our
communities recover in the wake of disaster.
WYMT has also built a reputation for holding local State and Federal
leaders accountable in the public eye, while not only providing
critical news to the region in every newscast but also celebrating our
victories in regional development and success.
Thanks to their central location in the region, mountain student
athletes have had an exclusive highlight real on the station's ``Sports
Overtime'' program, swelling up pride through every rural county for
student athletes who get little notoriety elsewhere.
In fact, that is where Neil Middleton started his broadcast
television news career in 1987. He drove across the mountains from
Harlan County every day to cover news and sports in southeastern
Kentucky for WYMT and WKYT-TV in Lexington.
Starting out as a radio DJ in high school, Neil worked his way up the
ranks as a broadcaster, eventually taking over the helm of WYMT as vice
president and general manager. Under his leadership, WYMT achieved a
record-breaking growth in advertising sales. He expanded newscasts,
sports, and weather. Neil developed new digital media assets and earned
countless accolades including regional Emmy awards.
The Associated Press has also recognized Neil's personal excellence
in journalism with numerous awards throughout his career. His same
passion and work for the region has also been recognized by the
Kentucky National Guard, local chambers of commerce, and many others.
Over the last four decades, Neil's passion to serve Kentucky's
Appalachian region has reached far beyond the news desk. He has served
as a board member for several organizations in the region, including
The Center for Rural Development, One East Kentucky, Alice Lloyd
College, Eastern Kentucky PRIDE, East Kentucky Leadership Foundation,
the Challenger Learning Center of Kentucky, and the Kentucky Associated
Press, among others.
As Neil closes this chapter of his career at WYMT, I want to express
my deepest gratitude for his unwavering commitment and loyalty to
Kentucky's Appalachian region. With every breath, he has advocated for
growth and development in the mountains, understanding the value of
every investment here and, likewise, the pain of every opportunity sent
away from central Appalachia.
Madam Speaker, it has been an honor to work in tandem with Neil on
many projects, including a hard-fought battle to add WYMT to satellite
broadcast in select areas to ensure local people have access to news
and weather alerts close to home. Neil should take great pride in his
efforts to make southern and eastern Kentucky a better place to live.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, it has been almost 2 months since
Congress has reconvened. Certainly, a lot of things have taken place
back home, things in the news that are a little bit shocking and ought
to be commented on.
The first thing I would like to point out--and we saw this again in
the first week back--a prominent Member of this Congress spoke about
the need to protect democracy. Again and again, people from both sides
of the aisle, but disproportionately from the Democrat side of the
aisle, talk about the necessity of protecting democracy and refer to
our country's democracy.
I remember hearing this for the first time when I was at Marquette
University, one of the largest universities in the State of Wisconsin.
A professor of government or history or something like that referred to
our country as a democracy.
When we recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day, they might want to
ponder that we talk about the Republic, the Republic for which it
stands. We don't talk about the democracy for which it stands. People
might wonder why politicians like to refer to our form of government as
a democracy but in the Pledge of Allegiance we refer it to as a
Republic.
At the time our Constitution was drafted, Ben Franklin talked about
giving us a Republic if we can keep it. In other words, he didn't say a
democracy if we can keep it. He said a Republic if we can keep it.
You might wonder whether our forefathers ever mentioned democracy. Of
course, they did. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison wrote:
``Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights
of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they
have been violent in their deaths.''
In other words, James Madison did talk about democracy, and he talked
about it negatively.
Why don't politicians like to talk about our country being a Republic
and prefer to talk about it as a democracy or a representative
democracy?
It is because in democracy the government is determined by the people
collectively or the majority of the people. In a Republic, we turn to
our Constitution.
There may, at any given time, be a majority of people in this body or
a majority of people in this country who don't like a given religion,
or they feel like we can confiscate people's property, or because there
has been a shooting on the news the night before, they want to ignore
the Second Amendment. Therefore, they might not like certain religions
and want to suppress that religion. They might not like certain ideas,
and they want to say that they were elected here, so they can suppress
those ideas.
There are two examples I would like to share with this body. There
was a bill called the McCain-Feingold Act that was passed by two
popular Congressmen around the year 2000. They wanted to restrict what
people could say or how much time people could buy in an election. In
other words, they wanted to restrict the freedom of speech. I am sure
both politicians at that time felt we are very popular. We have been
elected several times. We have the right to trample on somebody's free
speech.
Certainly, in an election season, I would like there to be less or
would prefer there to be less advertisements, less mailing going on.
The McCain-Feingold Act passed. The Supreme Court at the time had to
lecture, in essence, Senator Feingold and Senator McCain that we do not
live in a democracy. We don't care if you receive 60 or 65 percent of
the vote in your district. You do not have the right to say certain
people cannot buy time on television or send out mailings.
Another example, there was a very popular Governor in the State of
Wisconsin. I think very highly of the man. He wanted to say if you have
property along a State highway, we can restrict what you can do on that
property because someday we might want to buy that property when this
highway goes from a two-lane to a four-lane highway. Therefore, we will
make your front 50 feet or 60 feet along the highway less valuable
because, after all, we represent the government. We have been elected
overwhelmingly. The implication is this is a democracy, and we can take
your property from you.
Again, the State Supreme Court had to say that, hey, wait a minute.
We don't have a democracy here. We have a Republic. We don't care how
popular you are. You cannot interfere with what people can do with
their land along a highway.
It is another example in which politicians wished we had a democracy
or a representative democracy so they can tell you what you can do with
your property. In fact, our Constitution stood tall and said that we
don't care how you were elected or how many people voted for you, we
will not allow you to take people's property.
I believe that is why politicians like to talk about democracy.
Because they received 70 percent or 51 percent around here, they like
to believe they can determine what you can and cannot say.
As we continue throughout this biennium, let us try not to refer to
our form of government as a democracy. Let's refer to it as James
Madison or Ben Franklin would have liked to have us refer to it. What
they gave us was a republic under our wonderful, great Constitution.
Even though our Constitution allows people to say things we might
disagree with, even though our Constitution allows us to quote our
wonderful Holy Bible, even though our Constitution prevents the
government from taking
[[Page H6179]]
people's property without the Constitution, even though our
Constitution allows the carrying or owning of firearms, when a lot of
people around here don't think we should have the right to carry those
firearms, let us stand with our Republic and, bravely, just like when
we say the Pledge of Allegiance, bravely describe our country as a
Republic, not a democracy.
Again, James Madison said, democracies are spectacles of turbulence
and contention; have been found incompatible with personal security or
the rights of property; and have in general been short in their lives.
Now, I think during the past month or whatever it was we were not in
Washington, a couple of prominent Americans took aim at our
Constitution. In particular, they didn't like the First Amendment. They
didn't like that people were out there, saying things that they
disagreed with.
These former politicians both almost became the President of the
United States, which shows how precarious our hold on our great
Republic is.
I am talking, in part, about Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady
but, even worse, former Secretary of State, who almost became President
of the United States. She talked about social media companies and said
they must moderate content on their platforms or we will lose total
control.
In other words, Hillary Clinton felt that the government should
control our lives and they didn't like social media companies allowing
things to seep out into the zeitgeist. Maybe those things were hostile
to what Hillary felt. It is kind of hard to believe she almost became
President. She should always be remembered as someone who believed the
First Amendment caused the government to lose control.
{time} 1230
While we were out on recess, John Kerry, another man who almost
became President of the United States, called the First Amendment a
major block in combating misinformation and fighting climate control.
Of course, there is a disagreement with regard to climate change,
where it comes from, if it is happening, but John Kerry felt the way to
deal with this issue was apparently to deal with the First Amendment.
What he was doing here was talking to the World Economic Forum in a
panel on green energy. John Kerry was not only trying to trample on the
First Amendment rights of Americans; he wanted this idea to spread
throughout the world.
Can you imagine if he had ever become President of the United States,
a man who called the First Amendment a major block? My goodness. This
is what is going on, and the American public has to wake up.
During this time, there was also a letter made public by Mark
Zuckerberg, one of the wealthiest men in America. You would think the
wealthiest people in America above all would have the freedom to
exercise their First Amendment rights. Apparently not.
The Biden administration weighed in with Mark Zuckerberg. They didn't
like it that people out there had different opinions about COVID, how
to address it, and what was appropriate. The Biden administration
apparently contacted Mark Zuckerberg and his group, saying that maybe
there were things that the American public should know. In other words,
rather than having a free exchange of ideas on the value of the vaccine
or the value of social distancing or whatever, we shouldn't have an
open exchange of ideas. It would be better if we didn't have that pesky
First Amendment. It would be better if the people who know best--
Anthony Fauci or Pfizer, say--that we should just defer to them because
we all know how important Pfizer is. They certainly give a lot of
campaign contributions, which we politicians like. Therefore, we should
weigh in on the social media platforms and say there are some things
that are inconvenient to the country.
I hope when we return we do something to put a little more energy in
that First Amendment and, above all, educate the American public that
there are politicians out there--like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, or,
apparently, Joe Biden--who view the First Amendment as an obstacle in
their expansion of government.
I think this has, to a certain extent, been commented on, but not
commented on enough because too many important people--and here we are
talking about one President and two almost Presidents--wanted to end
people's First Amendment rights.
The First Amendment is only one of the things that make America so
great. Others are, I think, things referred to by Nikita Khrushchev and
other Communists who, at the time, wanted governments the exact
opposite of what we have.
We have a free country based on a republic and our Constitution and
anticipated to be a country for moral and religious people. Under
communism, we had a country aiming for atheism and totalitarianism in
which a government elite decides who we can work for, what goods are to
be produced, and the degree to which we penalize people who say things
that are not appropriately in line with what the government wants.
In any event, Nikita Khrushchev--in the 1950s and early 1960s, the
Soviet Union was kind of the center of communism--promised to someday
take over the United States. They would take over the United States
without firing a shot.
We spend a great deal around here on munitions, submarines, tanks,
and airplanes, but it was interesting that at one time the Communists--
and I think Nikita Khrushchev was speaking for the Communists--felt
they would take over this country without firing a shot.
What evidence is there that they are trying to weaken our country? I
think in addition to the fact that they want to chip away at the First
Amendment, I think there is hostility to families, old-fashioned
nuclear families, going on in this country. How are we trying to chip
away at the families? After all, people like Karl Marx did not like the
family.
One way to look at it is that there are currently over 90 programs in
the United States in which the benefits of those programs depend on
something referred to as percent of poverty. A percent of poverty
calculation penalizes two-parent families, or at least it penalizes
two-parent families if at least one of them is working a full-time job.
In other words, it encourages one-parent families.
I, and probably most of the people in this institution, were around
in 1965. Back at that time, only 5 percent of the children born in this
country were born into families who did not have both a mother and
father at home.
Over time, we have built up over 90 programs in which it was
difficult for this family to form. In other words, you get more money
right away if you have a family in which only one parent was there. We
have worked our way up to a situation where the child is born without
both parents at home in over 40 percent of families. Normally, this
means it is a fatherless family.
In other words, the government, which is supposed to treat everybody
equally, if you have a scale out there, it is overwhelmingly trying to
create an America in which the old-fashioned family is becoming more
obsolete.
I should point out that this has gone, like I said, from 5 percent to
40 percent. Programs that these families are eligible for are things
like SNAP or the Food Stamp program, the low-income housing program,
the earned income tax program, the Medicaid healthcare program, things
like the Pell Grant Program, TANF program cash assistance, SSI
disability program for the children all are inducements not to form an
old-fashioned family.
Every biennium--last time, Joe Biden's final budget request--the
government usually puts new programs on the heap or adds money to old
programs to make the gap between somebody who decides to have both
parents in the house compared to somebody who has only one parent in
the house.
One person who has written very eloquently on this hasn't been
listened to as much as he should--Robert Rector is one--is George
Gilder, who wrote a bestseller in 1980. I know there was anticipation
that Ronald Reagan would act on this book. He was not able to act on
it--my guess is primarily because the Republican House was always in
the minority at that time.
George Gilder used to look at what normally I refer to as slums or
low-income areas of the city. He focused on Albany, New York, and he
followed around a young couple where the young lady was pregnant.
[[Page H6180]]
To his surprise, it was not cause for concern like it has been
throughout all of history when a young girl gets pregnant and isn't
married. Rather, it was a cause for celebration, as the gleeful new
couple went around from the low-income housing people to the food stamp
people, to the Medicaid people, and signed up for all sorts of
benefits. At the time, they had something called AFDC cash payments. It
was a cause for celebration because now the young lady would not have
to live with her parents anymore. She was getting her own place.
I am sure the people who devised these programs were primarily a
money-oriented group, and they felt that this new program would be more
likely to have the young lady live on her own without having to live
with her mother or with her parents, so they felt they were doing
something good.
I think, over time, given the hostility of Karl Marx, given the
hostility to the radicals even in the 1960s and 1970s, there were
people who knew exactly what they were doing as they destroyed the
nuclear family in parts of America.
In any event, this is something we have to look at. When you combine
Federal programs with State programs, which frequently team up with
Federal programs, you can have situations in which there are $20,000,
$30,000, $35,000 penalties for people who decide to get married rather
than have people live with a single mother.
It is not like single mothers cannot be very good parents. It is not
hard to find people who have been raised in single-parent families who
are wonderful children. On the other hand, it is tougher. Statistics
would show that it is tougher.
In America, where we try to keep everybody equal, we should not
continue to have programs which kind of push more and more people into
that single-family situation.
I saw George Gilder weighing in on a topic just the other day. Like I
said, he wrote a great bestseller called ``Wealth and Poverty'' in
1980, and he is still around. He made the case that not only is this
bad for the children, but it is bad for the men because you create
swaths of society in which men have no purpose because, traditionally,
the purpose in an old-fashioned nuclear family is to be the
breadwinner.
Here, we have a situation in which he is not going to be able to make
enough money, in many cases, to match the government. As a result, we
have a situation in which the mother marries the government rather than
the husband, and in the long run, it hurts the husband as well.
I hope that this Congress, with such high hopes, works to take away
this marriage penalty. Regardless of what Karl Marx would have said,
regardless of what certain radical groups would say, we do not want to
penalize the father for becoming part of that household.
We know these people are still around. I mentioned, again, Black
Lives Matter, a group which many people in this institution were not
afraid to stand with, coming out against the traditional nuclear
family. It didn't cause people to run away from that group.
There are other quotes of radicals, Angela Davis, that crowd, over
the last 50 years, which, again, are hostile to the nuclear family,
making fun of the nuclear family, a preference for single parenthood.
I hope this Congress begins to chip away at that ideal. We do not
want to any longer have people penalized for getting married and trying
to form a traditional family. Indeed, we ought to be encouraging that.
It didn't work out as well as people wanted, but the next attack on
freedoms that I think our forefathers would not have seen is
congressional programs or programs created by Congress or the executive
branch trying to treat people differently by sex or race. These are
sometimes referred to as affirmative action programs, but there are
many other ways to refer to the programs.
The idea is that the government ought to aim programs at certain
subgroups of society, that we have to weigh in to have a
disproportionate number of women in a program compared to the women who
want to be in the program, a disproportionate number by ancestry. Be it
Asian American, African American, so-called Hispanic American, Pacific
Islander, or North African, the government should be favoring people by
the group that they are from.
This is another thing our forefathers would have been opposed to.
They wanted to treat all Americans equally. They did not want the
government to have our elections become a contest between ethnic
groups. They did not want our government programs to be a contest
between men and women as the government weighs in, as they do today, on
who owns companies that get government contracts.
If you get a government contract, the government wants to know which
ethnic group you are. Of course, you self-identify, so because you are
one-quarter Hispanic or one-quarter Native American, you should get
preferences to a program. Of course, they don't care here on amount of
wealth, so you are going to have a situation in which, say, an Asian
American worth tens of millions of dollars gets preference on a
government contract compared to a poor person of European descent, a
poor guy.
{time} 1245
The problem is not just the preferences, which are unfair in its own
right, it does result--soon, we are going to have a bill around here--a
lot more the government-at-large has to take care of with the problems
caused by the hurricanes. That just results in additional cost, maybe
quality, but certainly cost, depending upon who gets the project, but
it creates animosity.
It creates an America in which people do not say: I want to have the
best person for this program. Every government program, every
government hiring decision becomes a contest between men and women, or
a contest between Hispanic or Asian or what have you. It is a kind of
ridiculous contest because America is so nonracist in the first place,
but that is what we have going on in the program.
We have got to save some money by getting rid of these bureaucrats.
We ought to realize that the purpose of these programs is to divide
America.
There is a book out--I don't know if it is okay to use a picture of a
book here--but it is called, ``America's Cultural Revolution,'' by
Christopher Rufo. In this book, he points out that this idea of
breaking apart America by racial groups would be a way to destroy
America.
There was a Communist by the name of Marcuse, Herbert Marcuse, who
was very powerful in the late sixties and early seventies.
At that time, the Communist element, the Progressive element, has
always wanted to fundamentally change America. They were hoping to
change America by dividing America by wealth, and they wanted Americans
to be bitter and angry because some people lived in a nice house or had
a big bank account. They felt they could rile people up and make them
mad and bring out their worst emotions and create a revolution in
America.
They failed. In the late sixties and early seventies, there were a
lot of bombings, there were a lot of riots, but America was still a
country at heart that was proud to be American. They realized anybody
in America could realize the American Dream if they were willing to
work hard.
The Progressives failed in the late sixties and early seventies to
divide America by bitterness, by economic divide. As a fallback
position, they felt that maybe we can divide America by race, maybe we
can create bitterness and anger if we persuade people America is a
horrible racist country.
That is what they talk about in ``America's Cultural Revolution,''
the desire to destroy America because we want most Americans bitter and
angry and thinking that we have a racist country.
We have to get rid of the people who are pushing this division,
whether they are an American business, in academia, in government, a
lot of times they are referred to as DEI specialists.
The purpose of these people is to divide America and tell people
America is a horrible, racist country. It is on its face, by the way,
absurd.
I mean, the wealthiest subgroup in America today is Indian Americans.
They do not look European in nature. Many of them come here not knowing
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how to speak English. Most of them who come here are not Christian. If
the people are right that America is a horrible, racist country, that
they discriminate against people, these people would not be able to
rise to the level they have.
If you look at the other wealthiest Americans, almost none of them
are White and of European descent: Chinese Americans, Filipino
Americans, Japanese Americans, Cuban Americans, second-generation
African Americans all outperform native persons.
Nevertheless, this evil group of DEI people who administer these
programs use their positions to try to create resentment in America. It
should be a goal to cause Herbert Marcuse's successors to fail. We have
got to do all we can to get rid of these DEI specialists who encourage
hate, encourage racism, encourage resentment, spread a myth that we
have a big white supremacist problem.
There is no way, when we get down with the next level of
appropriation bills that this government--which is broke out of its
mind--ought to still have any bureaucrats who make this pitch
throughout America.
Of course, during the campaign, you will notice--some Republicans
fall guilty of this as well--there are campaign promises aimed at
individual ethnic groups rather than treating all Americans as one.
This is not something we had to do 20 or 30 years ago. It is obvious
that Herbert Marcuse Communists or radical socialists have achieved his
goal in that at least one political party plans to maintain power by
putting programs out there that benefit one ethnic group over another
ethnic group or promises financial benefits if you belong to one group
over another group.
Fortunately, so far, they haven't had a huge amount of success, but
if you talk around, they have made some progress in persuading some
people that we have a huge problem in society.
In any event, certainly an immediate goal for this institution is to
get rid of anybody preaching that DEI nonsense, certainly anybody whose
position in our government is to encourage their horrible philosophy.
In any event, there are some comments on what is going on in America.
Just to summarize again, I think we have to provide a little bit more
oomph behind our First Amendment so that people like Hillary Clinton or
John Kerry or Joseph Biden are pushed to the dustbin of history if they
decide to attack it or feel that is part of our problem.
I think we have to be very careful to not discourage the formation of
two-parent families like we have in the last 60 years.
I think we have to get rid of the bureaucracy, which is growing up,
which tries to divide America by ethnic background, is something else
that I think has to be done.
We have to educate our young people that we do not have a democracy.
James Madison and our forefathers would be shocked and stunned and
disappointed if this land, which they had founded, had twisted itself
all around, abandoned our respect for our Constitution, the Republic,
and instead was teaching our young ones that we had a democracy,
including some of the people with the greatest positions up here.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________