[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H4200-H4205]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2040
AMERICA CELEBRATING 250 YEARS
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms. Hageman
of Wyoming was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the
majority leader.)
Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about something
spectacular, something worthy of a year-long celebration, and something
that will shortly be lighting up the skies from sea to shining sea: the
250th anniversary of the creation of the greatest country that has ever
existed.
On July Fourth, we will be celebrating our collective birthday, and I
am honored to stand on the floor of the United States House of
Representatives, in this beautiful Capitol, in this glorious and
dynamic city, to describe what that means to me, the lone
Representative of the least populated State in our country.
Our experimental Republic, having been born from the ashes of a
Middle Ages monarchy, has survived 2\1/2\ centuries and is today
stronger than ever, with all of us being a testament to what our
forefathers envisioned, being a free people, participating in self-
governance, with an understanding of the vision and divine intervention
that created this country 250 years ago.
Mr. Speaker, 250 years that at times has involved struggle, hardship,
discrimination, and war, while also yielding 250 years of freedom,
opportunity, respect, compassion, and unprecedented prosperity.
It was 250 years of building a truly inspirational legacy that
warrants a generational celebration to confirm that Americans have the
right to be proud of our country, to celebrate what it means to be an
American.
Now this right to celebrate our 250th milestone does not mean that we
should ignore or rewrite our history, but that we should look upon that
history with a full and accurate understanding of what it means, both
in terms of our dark periods and our incredible accomplishments.
I will say it again because it bears repeating: America is the
greatest country in the history of the world.
Despite that fact, there are many individuals, including some who
serve in this very body and who are running for office, who claim
otherwise, and who seek to tear us apart from within so that they can
replace this Republic with the same type of failed states that exist
elsewhere in the world.
They claim that we have no American culture. They argue that slavery
is our original sin and that we should be forever and only defined by
that history. They claim that our forefathers, the Founders of this
country, are not worth honoring, but should instead be excised from our
collective consciousness.
So, while American pride has historically been part of the fabric of
our society, there has been an organized move afoot since at least the
1960s to undermine our reverence for this great country. Those actions
have taken several forms, such as with claims that America was never
great; with the retelling of our history; or with slanderous
accusations about who we are, what we believe in, and the contributions
that we have made to the world.
Considering the fact that we are celebrating 2\1/2\ centuries of
America's existence this year, I think it is high time that we confront
those sentiments head-on and expose those narratives for what they
are--an effort to destroy our republican form of government to make way
for the implementation of failed policies, moral bankruptcies, and the
human suffering found in socialism and Marxism.
Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to remind everyone as to what
has made us such a great country, why our history is worth defending,
and to emphasize that the future of America is bright indeed.
[[Page H4201]]
It is time that we celebrate America and everything that it means to
be American.
American Shame
Ms. HAGEMAN. Just this last summer, we learned that the number of
American adults who claim to be very proud of their country reached
another record low.
In Gallup's 25-year patriotism survey, just 17 percent, or less than
one in five American adults, reported that they were very proud of
being an American.
The number of adults who claimed to be extremely proud reached a 25-
year low and has now fallen to below 60 percent.
I hope that by focusing on America's 250th anniversary and looking
back over our history with honesty and accuracy, we will reverse these
declines.
I am, in fact, optimistic that these festivities we have already
enjoyed are currently inspiring a new sense of purpose in our national
identity, and I believe that we are on the right track to making
America proud again. Watching the soccer sports revelers who are
discovering the United States for the first time should make us all
proud. I know it does me.
Gallup's survey should cause us to take notice of what a lack of
pride in our country portends in the long term, while forcing us to
confront what the sustained attacks on our American identity have done
in the past and are doing to us now.
Many of our neighbors are asking why patriotism appears to be on the
decline when there is so much to celebrate about the United States of
America. What is behind this self-hatred that has permeated many of our
institutions? What is the ultimate destination of this downward spiral
into despair? What does intentional disparagement mean for our younger
generations?
The answers to these questions are not a mystery. They lie within the
deep, dark caverns of our political divisions and are boiling up into
the public square by those individuals and organizations who seek to
turn us into yet another failed state.
Our excitement for America has been dimmed by accusations of an
unacceptable morality, and our self-image has been tarnished by a novel
self-flagellation as part of a new revolution. It is a familiar
revolution; a color revolution; a digital revolution illuminating a
national dysphoria; a rapid onset extortion of American identity.
Self-Reflection to Self-Hatred
Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Speaker, our 250-year quest to become a more perfect
union has always involved asking hard questions and self-reflection:
How do we fulfill the promises of our founding documents in the
context of governing this vast country from east to west and north to
south?
How are we maintaining our core values of freedom, justice, and
equality?
How do we couple self-autonomy and liberty with civic responsibility?
How are we lifting up and caring for our most desperate citizens in
need?
We must continuously ask these questions because we must never lose
sight of the promise of America. We know that there are aspects of our
history during which our ancestors failed to live up to what this
country stands for, and I am not standing here today to pretend that
there is no shame in parts of our past. Like so many countries around
the world, the barbarism and shame of slavery is a stain on our early
identity. Slavery is, in fact, an indelible part of the history of
almost every country, from Western nations to the Middle East, to South
America, to Africa, and beyond.
But how we ultimately eradicated that stain is what sets America
apart. We overcame slavery's horror to eliminate this demon in our
national spirit. We tore our country apart with the Union fighting to
abolish slavery from our shores.
The ultimate victory was a great triumph, and by fighting to uphold
our own standards as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and
our Constitution, we have had a moral redemption of the American
character. Unlike the other countries around the world who had slavery
or continue to practice it to this day, we endured the exorcism of a
Civil War, and we emerged to secure a stronger, more equal, more just,
and more determined union.
Over 150 years ago, our ancestors fought fathers against sons and
brothers against brothers to eradicate slavery. Through the focus,
leadership, and determination of the great men and women, such as
Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, righteousness
prevailed.
Americans are rightfully proud of our demand for justice, freedom,
and liberty. These characteristics are part of our national identity.
But what do these words mean? Do we define them differently today
than in years past? Have we evolved? What does it mean to be proud to
be an American? I think that we all know, but we have allowed numerous
malign influences to take control of the dialogue and to try and
convince us that our history is not worth celebrating.
{time} 2050
That is why I am on the floor of the United States House of
Representatives today, to remind all of us as to who and what we are
and, perhaps just as importantly, what we are not, despite what has
been claimed as of late.
In my opinion, America 250 is the perfect moment to restore our
sacred pride and to challenge the slander of those who despise the
freedom of personal responsibility and self-governance, and we have an
obligation to be honest about what America is and what it isn't as we
enter the golden age of America's next 250.
American is Not an Idea
Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I stand here to remind Americans about how
our united history, culture, language, literature, art, music,
traditions, and innovations that define us as a nation long predate our
independence.
I start by being unequivocally clear: America was born with the very
best ideas put forth and memorialized by some of the very best minds. I
want to emphasize, however, that our country itself is far from a mere
idea or a state of mind. America is a nation of people who share common
values, traditions, history, and fate.
We have been a charitable people from the beginning. We have long
been a blessing to the world because of our culture of giving, hope,
perseverance, and redemption. We are united by the Judeo-Christian
values that compelled our first ancestors to come to America to pursue
their destiny and to create a country based on freedom--freedom of the
individual, of religion, and of family.
Our Founders articulated the philosophy of what America is in so many
different ways.
John Jay wrote in Federalist Paper No. 2: ``Providence has been
pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a
people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language,
professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of
government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by
their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side
throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general
liberty and independence.''
That is a message of unity, of brotherhood, of a shared humanity, and
we must be careful to always remember those characteristics that we
share as our common denominator. This is what makes America, America.
The fact that we have a unique shared culture, one that is worth
acknowledging, defining, preserving, and protecting.
This does not mean that we reject other cultures or traditions.
America has, in fact, been one of the most gracious countries in
history to welcome people from across the globe to our shores.
By inviting those who seek to make our country home, however, we are
not obligated to subjugate our American history, culture, and
traditions for theirs. We instead welcome them here to partake in and
succeed in the American way of life.
We must stop pretending that America is just an idea or that we have
no shared culture worth fighting for.
The moment we give up on America by believing it merely exists as an
abstract concept is the moment we forfeit our shared culture as a
nation. America has been the most potent force for good in human
history. The erasure of the very culture that underlies our success as
a country will be a dark moment for all of Western civilization if we
allow it to happen.
What better time to celebrate our history, culture, and traditions
than on this 250th anniversary, being optimistic that in 2026, while
looking both
[[Page H4202]]
backwards and forwards since Ronald Reagan professed it to be ``morning
again in America,'' we will realize that it is a bright, golden sunrise
shining over the new horizons of a novel American Pax Romana, the dawn
of a truly golden age of America.
American Dream
Ms. HAGEMAN. The existence of America to those who came before this
country was willed into existence by our forefathers and those willing
to die for their noble cause was a dream: a paradise of freedom away
from religious persecution and in harmony with neighbors, a place
united by the Christian values that championed the family and preserved
individual liberty.
One of the Nation's most famous civil rights heroes later articulated
what that meant in a speech for the ages in 1963. He shared a dream
just 2 miles west of this Capitol on the grand steps to the monument of
the Great Emancipator.
He dreamed `` . . . that my four little children will one day live in
a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but
by the content of their character.''
Dr. King was assassinated just 5 years later, but his words carry his
legacy as a living memory. A memory which to be both proud and careful
of as a warning about our present decade.
The United States is experiencing many of the same stress tests today
that we survived through the 1960s.
We are locked in a competitive space race with a nuclear rival.
Our foreign policy is wrapped around countering rival communist,
fascist, and totalitarian regimes across the world who have no respect
for human life, value, or dignity.
Our university campuses are hotbeds of unrest and disunity with calls
to destroy the social contract that has allowed differing groups,
religions, and philosophies to not only exist in harmony but to
actually thrive, and for our people to love each other like brothers.
We are facing historic divisions in our cities where anarchy, race
riots, and political assassinations have returned.
We have faced these trials before.
They are the familiar currents of cultural upheaval with a
frightening future, an anxious uprising inspired by the demonic
impulses of envy and greed embedded in racial, classist, and sexual
resentment. These weaponized emotions threaten to divide us further
and represent yet another obstacle to conquer on our crusade to deliver
a more perfect union.
This effort to divide us into ever smaller subcategories of humans,
to slice and dice us into the smallest subset possible to further a
victim mentality, isn't designed to strengthen our core as a country
but to conquer us as a united people and to sully our shared society.
Despite these efforts, the same common denominators that unite the
American nation have always been our salvation, and it will be the
resurgence of our shared Judeo-Christian values on this 250th
anniversary that will save us again.
I come from the mountain west. Being born and raised in Wyoming is
one of the greatest blessings of my life. There are six generations of
my family who have called Wyoming home, and we, along with our extended
family, have worked tirelessly to build the State to represent the
heart and soul of America's destiny and legacy.
We are the Nation's least-populated State, but we are a mighty herd
at the frontier of the American march forward.
Prairie populism carried the banner of progress forward, a new land
of opportunity for freedom's endeavor, as we united this country from
shore to shore.
Wyoming was the first State to give women the right to vote, passing
the Women's Suffrage Act on December 10, 1869, a full 50 years prior to
the passage of the 19th Amendment, granting this right to women
nationwide.
Wyoming was a haven for free African Americans who enriched our
cowboy and Western heritage, coming to Wyoming to homestead and create
communities. We are proud to be the home of the Northern Arapahoe Tribe
and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Indian Reservation,
whose cultures and traditions have enriched our cultural history.
Our pristine national parks and monuments stand as temples of a
shining exceptionalism to our respect for the environment, beauty,
serenity, and the sublime. The pulsing geysers at Yellowstone beat the
heart of a humble people whose character defines the mission-driven
stoicism within the American spirit.
The West has always embodied the ultimate destiny of the American
people with its story being told by a proud, bold, patriotic clan in
pursuit of prosperity and autonomy. The individual's birthright to
self-determination declared in our founding documents characterizes our
unapologetic crusade for justice, liberty, and expanding what is
possible.
We reached for freedom westward first, piercing the barriers of
distance, wilderness, weather, and hostile conditions. Our ancestors
survived against harsh elements, and they connected a continent.
As we moved westward, we took our culture and traditions with us,
including those promises embodied in the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution, thereby establishing a country that spans North
America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, where all people
are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
rights.
The American Dream took root in the homestead on our ancestors'
Western crusade for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The
promise of private land ownership became a uniquely American ambition,
available to the calloused hands of hungry settlers who built a nation
and a culture shaped by shared trials and a common destiny.
Today, the American Dream stretches coast to coast, united by our
heritage to create and sustain a free and just society.
It is this history that draws people from around the world to pursue
that American Dream.
The world comes to America not because we are corrupt but because we
are not. The world comes to America not because we are racist or sexist
but because we are not. The world comes to America not because of the
tired mantra that ``diversity is our strength'' but because of our
shared culture and history. The world comes to America not because we
have nothing to offer but because we are exceptional.
We enjoy a degree of freedom and opportunity like nowhere else on
Earth, including in the very European country that birthed America,
whose leaders are currently openly renouncing the Magna Carta's civil
contract in order to push policies that will ultimately destroy Western
civilization if they are not reined in.
There is no German dream or French dream. There is no Guatemalan
dream or Haitian dream, and there has never been a Somali dream. It is
the American Dream: the idea that anyone can realize success regardless
of their circumstances, where race, sex, ethnicity, and background are
not barriers to harnessing someone's full potential.
I am an example of that American Dream. When I was born, I was my
parents' fifth child, and my oldest sister was just 5 years old. When
they brought me home from the hospital, they had just recently bought a
ranch, were over $200,000 in debt in 1962, and had $35 in the bank.
This is the home where they brought me as a new infant, and our family
continued to grow even after that, with more brothers being added
later.
{time} 2100
We all worked to make that operation a success. I learned to drive
when I was 4 so I could help my father feed cows. We were on horseback
working cows almost before we could count them. We fixed fences,
irrigated, did the chores, and milked cows. I graduated from Lingle-Ft.
Laramie High School with a class of around 30 students. We were taught
English, literature, history, science, social studies, calculus, and
trigonometry. We built pig barns and learned how to weld, although I
was not very proficient at the latter.
I had brilliant and compassionate educators who taught me to think
and presented we with the rich mosaic of the real world so I could
succeed in the real world.
Mr. Speaker, I realized fairly early that I probably was not going to
make
[[Page H4203]]
it in the welding field, so I chose to go to a community college on a
livestock judging scholarship. I then attended the University of
Wyoming where I have to confess I drank a lot of beer, played a lot of
pool, and had more fun than was probably legal. I worked highway
construction to help pay for school. I lived in a truck stop one
summer. I later obtained both my bachelor's degree and my law degree
and practiced law for 34 years representing farmers, ranchers,
businessowners, gravel pits, municipalities, oil and gas companies, and
most anyone who was being persecuted by the Federal Government.
I have always wanted to be a long-haul truck driver when I grow up so
I could travel every mile of this beautiful country and relish being an
American. In the meantime, here I am.
Why is my history important when discussing why we should be proud of
our heritage? Because I am absolute proof of what our forefathers
sought to implement in showing that it has come to pass.
We are a government of, by, and for the people. I am everyman U.S.A.
My history and my story are the history and story of tens of millions
of people in this country.
I came from the most humble of beginnings living in this house on the
Cheyenne to Deadwood Stage Trail with no telephone and limited access
to the outside world, and I am today standing on the floor of the
United States House of Representatives speaking on behalf of the
millions of my brothers and sisters everywhere. Only in America is my
story possible, and I celebrate that every day.
America 250 marks the milestone of a nation born out of grit, a
desire for improvement, and a quest for innovation that are ingrained
in our pioneer DNA. Our evolution is guided by an unrelenting passion
for liberty's progress, 250 years of being guided by our instincts to
confront new frontiers.
In 1776, our forefathers had already recognized that it was time to
throw off the limits of arbitrary boundaries previously established by
a European monarch. The first Americans had already begun pushing West
on the eve of our national independence.
Daniel Boone captured the Nation's divine early hunger for
exploration with a trailblazing expedition across the Cumberland Gap.
The millions who followed over the subsequent 250 years have done so in
Boone's footsteps chasing prosperity by conquering the elements and
mapping their own future.
By 1826, our country had already developed a strong taste for
expansion after having doubled the land mass before turning even 50
years old. The Louisiana Purchase unleashed the budding ambition of
American frontiersmen defining a new era of self-determination by
driving further westward.
Mountain men like Jim Bridger, John Colter, and Jedediah Smith
carried Boone's legacy into the wilderness. Beaver trappers pioneered
the first global economy. The next 50 years featured a mass migration
to settle the continent. Farmers, builders, artists, intellectuals,
gold miners, businessowners, dreamers, second sons, and even some
storied outlaws moved West to claim their future in the new frontier.
By 1876, a new national hero emerged to represent the truest form of
American individualism, as our Nation settled the West. The lone cowboy
riding on the distant horizon staked his claim in the American
identity, a male model of resilience epitomizing strength, integrity,
and stoicism. The image of his determined drive stays with us as a
defining character in American culture, an aspirational figure of self-
sufficiency and adventure to guard his herd, his Nation, and his
neighbor.
My own great-grandfather joined a cattle drive in 1878, heading north
from Texas, eventually settling in Wyoming where he lived for the next
60-plus years and leaving a legacy as an honest cowboy and rancher that
continues to impact our State to this day. There are many like him in
Wyoming and elsewhere, yet another layer in the glorious traditions and
history of our great Nation.
By 1926, the American frontier was transformed by the exponential
industrialization of a united continent. New networks of transportation
and communication collapsed distance by using innovation. Our expansion
reached far beyond our shores. Hawaii and Alaska represented the ripe
new territories beyond the edge of the Western frontier.
America's desire for exploration and conquering far-distant frontiers
escaped into orbit as we approached our 200th birthday. The mission to
the Moon had just been accomplished by the bicentennial of 1976. The
Apollo landings became an instant legacy to our pioneering endeavors,
delivering the next generation of frontiersmen in the form of a new
American hero defying gravity: the astronaut.
His horse of steel and rocket fuel propelled a high-octane expression
of American exploration into the future. The new path forward is a
trail blazed upward, unlocking space-based industry and a colony on the
Moon as America reaches 250.
It was by the will of a collective people, united by a cultural
desperation to determine their own story and achieve the impossible
that we conquered the first Moon landing--250 years of a nation
reaching forward, westward, and upward, escaping gravity, breaking
previous realities, and unleashing endless new possibilities. Our
national compass stopped pointing West. It started pointing up into the
heavens. Our celestial neighbors marked the latest boundary of the
American frontier. The sky is no longer the limit. In America, Mr.
Speaker, it never has been.
We now choose to go back to the Moon not because President Kennedy
said we should 60 years ago but because the Moon represents the next
stop as we continue to realize our manifest destiny.
The stars taunt us as the next mythical paradise beyond our horizon
to carry the banner of our cowboy legacy, an otherworldly wilderness
for American frontiersmen to tame for God and for country.
These stars have been on our national flag since our ancestors went
to battle for our freedom. They fly again on the wings of heroes
blasting themselves to convey America further than we have ever gone
before. Deep human space flight is the ambition of our generation.
We plant our values on triumphant territory in the name of American
glory, the banner that waved over Fort McHenry, the flag our heroes
raised amid the costly battle at Iwo Jima, the Stars and Stripes
planted by the astronaut cowboy on a distant crater.
For 250 years, the flag has been an early symbol of American
vigilance, an emblem of our pride and heroism.
In the 1860s, the Gettysburg flag waved among the unbearable noise of
wars as our ancestors fought to keep the Union together and abolish
slavery. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong would plant the flag in the
vast lunar mare known as the Sea of Tranquility, in almost total
silence a century later.
This year, the flag returned to alien gravity, and the Stars and
Stripes that draped our most famous 1980 hockey team waved once again
at an Olympic triumph over Canada, a miracle on ice in the year of our
250th.
The American flag is the ultimate unifier. We wear them. We hang
them, and we pledge allegiance to them as the declaration of commitment
to our country, our neighbors, our heroes, our culture, and our
history. The colors conceptualize our gratitude for those who are
willing to lay down their lives for our great country and for what it
means to be connected to each other as Americans.
They cover the caskets of the brave men and women who paid for our
freedom.
We honor each other when we honor those servicemembers. The flag has
always been the reminder throughout our 250 years of how far we have
come, how much it cost, and how much is possible.
It is a reminder to be proud of our American heritage, the freedoms
we all share, and a how a price has always been paid, willingly so, by
those who believe in everything that America stands for.
{time} 2110
Thirteen men and women have now paid the ultimate dues of American
liberty this year in Iran. They join the more than 1 million men and
women who gave their lives for our country since 1775.
On Veterans Day, we thank those who served and survived. On Memorial
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Day, we honor those who died, making the ultimate sacrifice. It is
because of them that we are able to celebrate Independence Day.
They are why we made it to America 250. They did not die for a mere
idea. They died for the values embedded in our flag, the ultimate
representation of pride, love, and commitment to our great American
Nation, free and united by the best ideas.
We recently celebrated Flag Day, a day to salute the most common
banner of our character, the symbol of our shared identity as Americans
in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, a star-spangled emblem for
hope and harmony.
Now, for some reflection on where we are and what ails us, Mr.
Speaker, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have worked
mightily to weaponize our history to indict our Nation as irredeemable.
Radical academics glorify The 1619 Project so that they may dismiss the
miracle of 1620, when our ancestors planted the seeds of our country on
their historic voyage aboard the Mayflower, the inaugural expedition
westward that would define the direction of American destiny.
It was they who sailed into existence a Nation inspired by our Judeo-
Christian values and who began the construction of the shining city on
the hill.
The Pilgrim crusade for the right to self-determination reached a new
milestone just 167 years after they arrived on our shores, when the
Founders kicked off 250 years as an independent nation.
Thirty-five million Americans trace their lineage to the Mayflower.
What a legacy, and what a history. What they began based on faith,
freedom, and hope has now evolved into a miracle, the miracle of our
forefathers creating a country based not on government control, but on
individual freedom.
Today, the left reveres 1619 as what they say is the year of
America's true founding. The year the first slaves were imported to
America has become the defining moment for a new generation of cultural
revolutionaries hellbent on tearing our society apart. They lionize
past pain to drape themselves in a toxic form of victimhood,
antithetical to America's true values.
The perpetual hoax that demands that we view ourselves entirely
through the lens of racial injustice, however, dismisses our great
legacy and history, as does their characterization that America was
built for the sole purpose of oppression.
That is simply not true. Acknowledging the horrors of slavery does
not justify ignoring the greatness of America or counsel against
celebrating the accomplishments of Americans from all walks of life.
Twisted theories designed to disgrace American exceptionalism come in
spite of everything we have done. Yet, it takes very little imagination
to recognize that the world would be a dark place, indeed, were it not
for America. I mean that both figuratively and literally.
In 1879, Thomas Edison lit up the night when he invented the light
bulb in New Jersey, soon after visiting Wyoming to witness the total
eclipse of the Sun and enjoy our world-famous fishing.
Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call just 3
years earlier in Boston.
In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright changed our reality with the first
powered flight across the Carolina sky. American aviators would pioneer
jet age travel within just half a century thereafter.
In 1908, Henry Ford rolled the first Model T out of the garage. His
assembly line would unleash the American car as the ultimate freedom
machine to explore our wide-open country, while also changing the very
nature of manufacturing and, thereby, altering the world forever.
Today, LED smartphones connect places around the globe in a
nanosecond. You can charge them in the car or while flying in an
airplane.
Mr. Speaker, my mother is 102 years old. I want you to just think of
the changes that she has seen in her lifetime. Having grown up on a
farm in Minnesota, they spent their days tending the garden, working in
the fields, taking care of the animals, chopping wood, and canning
food.
Because of American ingenuity and the commercial production of
affordable and reliable energy, the last 100 years have seen changes
unrivaled in human history: an increase in life expectancy, a decrease
in the infant mortality rate, central air, warm homes, and abundant
food sources produced right here.
American innovation and freedom are at the center of these advances
that my mother has experienced, and we should be forever grateful for
those who have dedicated their lives to making our lives better, both
with regard to incredible technological and medical advances, as well
as creating the arts and music that we so enjoy.
The world's most consequential technologies are products of
Americans' advancements. Computers, the internet, GPS, flight,
fracking, and vaccines have been delivered from the laboratory of
American democracy.
Our form of a republican democracy itself has always been America's
best innovation. American free market capitalism has done more to
relieve human suffering than any other system in human history, making
every invention I just mentioned even a possibility.
Today, Americans enjoy a level of prosperity and equality like
nowhere else on Earth and like no time in human history. I encourage
any skeptics to look at Iran if there is any doubt, where women are
barbarically abused and gays are thrown off roofs.
Marxist countries are no better, with the Cuban people having now
been oppressed for over 60 years, while their government overlords have
become filthy rich by exploiting their suffering.
America 250 is a reminder of America's world-changing contributions.
Our ideas lifted more people out of poverty than any other civilization
that has ever existed. Our heroism and bravery saved the world from two
global wars. Our values inspired hundreds of millions to rise up for
liberty.
The leftist dogma through which today's revolutionaries write off
history is a national tragedy and must be exposed as the intellectually
lazy pablum that it is.
The left dons the crown of victimhood to erase what it means to be a
country of citizens pursuing a common cause. They flood the Nation with
third-world immigrants who do not assimilate into our culture, with
their militant refusal to do so tearing the American spirit while
feeding waste, fraud, and abuse.
The left cheers for the breakdown of the nuclear family, while then
using the resulting misery as a way to bolster their own power.
America has a choice on this anniversary, and we should choose to
rally around the same glorious flag that we all recognize in the year
of our 250th. The Star-Spangled Banner reminds us how there is more
that unites us as a nation than there is to drive distrust, envy, and
anger among neighbors.
I challenge every American to wrap themselves in our national colors
throughout our historic anniversary. Reject the rainbow banners of
identity politics and division. Embrace tradition. Embrace America.
The American flag is the banner of our crusade under a shared
destiny, a call sign to conquer the frontier, and a symbol of our
national redemption.
America Has Too Much To Be Proud Of
Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am calling on all Americans to embrace
this once-in-a-generation chance to be a part of this historic
celebration. Honor our war heroes. Practice gratitude for their
service. Make patriotism contagious. Redouble your efforts to make your
own communities places of wholesome, caring, productive, and embracing
enjoyment.
Mr. Speaker, celebrating everything we made possible everywhere is
impossible because there is simply too much to be proud of. In fact,
our national anniversary cannot even fit into a single day on July
Fourth. America 250 has become a yearlong celebration, coinciding with
the kickoff of a decade of global sports on American soil.
In 2 years, the Los Angeles Olympics will follow the World Cup,
welcoming spectators from around the world to experience America as we
begin another chapter in our 250-year journey.
Europeans who have traveled here for the World Cup have flooded
social media with expressions of wonder and
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amazement about all of the greatness that is America, including the
abundance of resources and the benefits of a high-trust society. It is
sad when some of our own neighbors fail to see it, but our visitors
can.
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This summer, Washington, D.C., will host the INDYCAR series to race
the Freedom 250 Grand Prix through our Nation's Capital. This high-
octane expression of American patriotism joins the endless parade of
cross-country events as an encore for our Independence Day
celebrations.
While Americans commemorate our historic anniversary with the
unapologetic and bombastic celebrations characteristic of our shared
identity, there are countless ways that we can celebrate with our
neighbors every single day--most importantly, celebrating America and
being an American and continuing to break bread with our families and
neighbors.
Our history has not been perfect, Mr. Speaker, but there is so much
to be proud of as a nation and as Americans.
Our achievements are like the scope and size of the universe barely
scratched by the Artemis program: They are simply too great for us to
fully appreciate unless we are willing to actually study who we are,
what makes us different, why America has succeeded as a beacon of hope
and renewal, and why we must fight every day to make sure that the next
250 years are even more spectacular than the last.
America is almost too big and too beautiful to understand the reach
of our exceptionalism, but we can do it when we put our mind to it by
reminding ourselves of the glorious things that have been wrought over
the last 250 years because America exists.
America has exceeded the limits of the imagination and expanded
beyond the wildest dreams of our forefathers and Founders when they
began to put together a country that would ultimately become the
American Dream.
We are one big, beautiful Nation, united under one God, invisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
In less than 2 weeks from today, the Sun will rise on the first day
of America's next 250 years.
God bless America.
Yes, thank You, God, for blessing America.
Mr. Speaker, in gratitude for being able to serve in this august body
of men and women dedicated to protecting and defending our Republic, I
yield back the balance of my time.
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