[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21765-21769]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



           THE FOUR CORNERSTONES OF MY SEASON IN THE CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Smith of Michigan). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from Idaho (Mrs. 
Chenoweth-Hage) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mrs. CHENOWETH-HAGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise on this occasion to give a 
very special sort of address. I am not here today to talk about a 
specific piece of legislation or to discuss any one thing in particular 
that the administration is doing or failing to do, but my message here 
today is both personal in nature and something that I hope that my 
colleagues and future Members of this great body will find useful in 
times to come.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk about the experience that one very 
average American citizen has had over the course of the past 6 years in 
being a part of what has been termed the greatest deliberative body on 
earth: The United States Congress. And although people call me 
Congressman, or sometimes Congresswoman, I am very much simply an 
average American citizen, an American citizen who took leave from her 
ordinary, average American life to serve for a time as an advocate for 
over half a million people in a State 2,000 miles away. And that can 
only happen in America.
  Now, after serving here for 3 terms, I am fulfilling a pledge that I 
made in 1994, and I am leaving this body of my own will, returning to a 
life of an average American citizen to live under the laws that I hope 
that we have made a little bit better here.
  I want to share with my colleagues and for the record some of my 
observations about this great government of ours, the daunting 
responsibilities we hold here, and my hope for the future. So I want to 
talk about several things.
  I want to discuss the purpose of this mighty Congress and what its 
proper role is in the lives of ordinary Americans. I want to discuss 
how certain matters become very real and very practical matters in our 
everyday life, matters that may have at one time been theory but have 
become reality. And I want to raise some real questions and concerns 
about the future.
  First, however, I would like to say a few words about some of the 
people who have worked for me and assisted me over the years. I feel 
that I have an extraordinary staff. I have been blessed, not through my 
own skill but I think it was just a blessing, that I was able to pull 
together a staff that I think are unusually brilliant and unusually 
fine Americans and who, within themselves individually, the flame for 
liberty and freedom beat within their hearts and, therefore, we were 
able to accomplish much together, this Chenoweth team.
  My staff consisted of: Lois Anderson, Judy Boyle, Chris Caron, Doug 
Crandall, Georgia Golling, Ann Heissenbuttel, Chad Hyslop, Dave 
Kroeger, Dean Lester, Lisa Lovell, Matt Miller, Linda Mullin, Nathan 
Olsen, Karen Roetter, Keith Rupp, Valerie Schatz, Elizabeth Schwarzer, 
Tereasa Sinigiani, and Rhonda Tilden. And to all of them I just want to 
say thanks so much for the wonderful job.
  There is a great deal of personal affection and admiration that I 
hold for my office staff, and there is among all of us the thing that 
has always bound us together and given purpose to our days here on 
Capitol Hill, which has been our shared commitment to a vision, a 
vision of our Nation and our government here in America. Let me tell my 
colleagues a little bit about that vision.
  My vision as a Congressman for the first district of Idaho has been 
that America would continue to be a land where people live in peace 
with one another; that they respect each other's individual rights and 
property; and that people are free to advance as far as their 
individual talents and commitments to work hard will take them.
  I believe that the rights of the people are not derived from 
government but, rather, the inalienable rights of the people to life, 
liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness are God-given rights 
that existed prior to the formation of any government. It is because 
these rights exist that governments are created by the people to help 
protect these rights that are God given. My vision is for a government 
that is keenly aware of this relationship between the governed and the 
governors, and which views its primary role as a protector of people's 
rights as opposed to a protector of people's persons or what they may 
think, and which views itself as the servant of the people and never 
the people's master.
  I envisioned a congressional office staff which recognized the 
primacy of the citizens over the government, and I insisted that my 
staff recognize that they work for the constituents in Idaho's first 
district and across America, not the government; and that advancing the 
vision of freedom and individual liberty and providing service to 
constituents is the first priority in our office.
  Most people who serve in this institution, I daresay, have a vision 
for the country and for their constituents. Those visions must be 
larger than our own personal ambitions and they must spring from a 
sense of purpose not necessarily for ourselves at all but for our 
fellow Americans and future generations. But what is the source of that 
purpose? To ponder that question is to ponder the purpose of government 
itself.
  Since the beginning of time, man has wondered how to live together in 
harmony. Volumes have been written about it. It certainly has never 
been easy to figure out. There has always been a tendency for people to 
equate might with right. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously argued 
that man tends to be self-serving and to have a natural tendency to 
strive against and to plunder his fellow man. This is the basis of why 
we have government. People exist, people are born with certain natural 
rights. They have a right to continue to exist, and no one has a right 
to harm or kill another.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield 
for just a moment, I just wanted to say, on behalf of many of us in the 
United States House of Representatives, I would like to thank the 
gentlewoman for her very diligent and hard work not only in 
representing the gentlewoman's district but in helping the United 
States of America. It is not easy. The gentlewoman has sacrificed, like 
many of us, a great deal.
  So I thank the gentlewoman very, very much for her tremendous 
contribution that she has made in the last 6 years.
  Mrs. CHENOWETH-HAGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Michigan, and I will always have very fond memories of landing in the 
gentleman's office and asking him to help me go over an appropriations 
bill and help

[[Page 21766]]

untangle the mystery of the appropriating process here. The gentleman 
has been a great teacher.
  I want to remind my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that liberty is 
something that people have a right to their own freedom and they may 
not be held in bondage to one another. That is what liberty means. It 
is so important that we remember people's property rights. People 
simply do have a right to own things, and we have a responsibility to 
make sure that we respect the ownership rights of others.
  The philosopher John Locke expounded on this notion when he said 
labor, in and of itself, is the origin and justification of property, 
according to Locke. And whatever a man ``mixes his labor with'' is his 
to use. It is his property. So in the state of nature, men have a right 
to protect their natural rights and to punish transgressors. So civil 
society arises when men agree to delegate this job of protecting their 
rights to an unbiased entity: A government. So because men establish 
this entity, government, they have the right to set limits on its 
authority, to modify it, or even to dismantle it should the need arise.
  Now, a century later, this served as the rational foundation for our 
own Declaration of Independence. It is that very doctrine that gave us 
Americans the very moral authority to rebel against the tyranny of the 
British Crown. Why, my colleagues might ask, am I going over all this 
ancient history? Well, it is very simple, Mr. Speaker. It is because 
people forget. People forget across this Nation, but people forget in 
this body as well.
  Mr. Speaker, if during one of my colleagues' town hall meetings that 
we all hold in our respective districts, they were to ask their 
constituents why we have a government, people would be likely to stare 
at them like a tree full of owls and they would probably experience an 
uncomfortable silence. Then, suddenly, some wiseacre might pipe up and 
say that he has been trying to figure that out all of his life. But 
then, usually, someone will say, well, we have government because we 
need to provide for the national defense. Well, they are on the right 
track, but that is not all there is to it.
  Seldom will we hear one of our constituents recite those vitally 
important words of Thomas Jefferson, those words that he wrote in the 
Declaration of Independence, which states: ``We hold these truths to be 
self-evident: That all men are created equal, and that they are endowed 
by their creator with certain inalienable rights, rights that among us 
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that to secure 
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the governed.''
  Oh, I hope that that will become emblazoned indelibly on our souls 
and our spirits and our minds; that government receives its just power 
from those who are governed. But to secure the rights of government, 
governments are instituted among men, and the reason our government 
exists is to secure the inalienable rights of the American people. No 
more, no less.
  That has been my message over the past 6 years. It is very simple, it 
is very old, but it works for freedom and liberty. And while I am 
certain that a poll of our colleagues would find universal agreement 
and sentiment for that very sentiment that I just expressed, we have 
differing opinions on how we turn those eloquent words into action. It 
has been my experience that turning those values into real action seems 
to be one of the hardest things for some people to really, truly 
understand.
  Sometimes my colleagues seem to think that little things are 
unimportant. But, Mr. Speaker, the little things are so vitally 
important. I think every schoolchild has heard the poem about the 
importance of little things by George Herbert when he wrote that: ``For 
the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For the want of a shoe, the 
horse was lost; For the want of a horse, the rider was lost; For the 
want of a rider, the battle was lost; For the want of a battle, the 
kingdom was lost!''
  Yes, Mr. Speaker, little things matter. Little nails in horses hooves 
matter. They matter to all of us. And these little things are very 
important in the fight and the maintenance of our freedoms.
  Some of my colleagues have certainly scratched their heads in wonder 
over some of the positions that I have taken over these years, and they 
wonder why I make such a big deal about language affecting private 
property rights or over some language that some might consider obscure 
issues, like the primacy of State water rights. My insistence that 
these rights be protected has certainly inconvenienced some Members of 
this House and served to annoy some Members and their staffs. And 
though it is sometimes an inconvenience, I hope that all who love 
freedom can understand how much more inconvenient it would be if we 
carelessly neglected the little nails and just began to give away our 
freedoms and liberty.

                              {time}  1515

  If the first job of government is to protect the rights of the 
freedoms of its citizens, then that is the standard by which we must 
first measure every single act we undertake.
  I would like to discuss how I have attempted to apply these ideals to 
certain legislation in the hope that it might help some understand the 
importance of these issues, and perhaps some of my colleagues might 
take up this banner and continue to carry it forward as I leave this 
fine institution.
  There are four areas in which I have seen the struggle most closely 
and I felt it most deeply. These have been the four cornerstones of my 
work here in Congress; and that is protecting the Constitution and 
protecting the rights of citizens, protecting our property and the 
wealth of our people, and protecting our national sovereignty.
  Mr. Speaker, each of us swears an oath to uphold the Constitution of 
the United States of America and to protect it. But, Mr. Speaker, there 
are so many Americans, and I daresay a few of our colleagues here in 
this House, who seem to think that this is a matter of evolving and 
galloping interpretation.
  But I remember when I first came to Congress in 1995, during those 
heady days of the Contract with America, one of the first matters that 
was considered in the Contract with America was granting the President 
line item veto authority. The power, in effect, would grant to the 
President the power to rewrite our legislation by eliminating certain 
specific provisions in the bills that we sent to him and then 
immediately signing that legislation into law.
  I felt that that was unconstitutional. But this was an issue that had 
been championed by the people, especially Republicans, and it was a 
proposal favored by my favorite President, Ronald Reagan.
  But I broke ranks with the leadership of my own party to oppose the 
line item veto. I did oppose it. I did vote against it because I 
believed that it constituted an unconstitutional shift away from 
legislative power to the administration.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I can remember that it was difficult to go home 
after that vote, and I can remember a lot of my fellow Republicans 
criticizing me for that position. Who was I but a freshman Member, just 
an ordinary woman from Idaho, from a small western State, to oppose 
this kind of gigantic reform.
  But I must confess that it gave me some small degree of satisfaction 
when the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was, indeed, 
unconstitutional for the President to have the power to rewrite 
legislation by vetoing part of it and struck down the line item veto.
  Likewise, I have always thought that one aspect of the Endangered 
Species Act was especially silly, and I have fought against the 
ramifications of the Endangered Species Act since I first came to 
Congress.
  But it was a legal tradition that held under the Endangered Species 
Act in and of itself that people did not have legal standing under the 
Endangered Species Act.
  In fact, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that humans are not 
within the realm of jurisdiction under the Endangered Species Act. So 
if your

[[Page 21767]]

private property was taken under the Endangered Species Act, you had 
absolutely no recourse for the damages. The only way a person could be 
an advocate in court under the Endangered Species Act, according to the 
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, was if they went in there and sued on 
behalf of an endangered species. They had to represent the species, not 
the human.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I offered legislation to correct this obvious flaw 
in the law. And my colleagues should have heard some of the hoots 
offered up when I did that. Some people assumed that I was being 
facetious when I argued that people should have at least the same legal 
rights as the bugs and the snails and the animals and the plants.
  But while my bill was working its way through the system, the United 
States Supreme Court beat me to the punch and ruled that, yes indeed, 
people do have legal standing under the Endangered Species Act. So, 
once again, I felt vindicated by the United States Supreme Court.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to remind my colleagues that the genesis of the 
Constitution has been proven by the test of time as well as the genius 
of that great document. It has succeeded when others have failed. The 
United States is now the longest running democracy in the history of 
the world, but it will only continue to be so if we jealously guard and 
protect the Constitution and if we do not give in to the political 
expediency of the day and begin to weaken it.
  I think about the political correctness that is now beginning to 
drive public policy in this Nation, and I have to remember what 
Charlton Heston just recently said, and this was that ``political 
correctness is simply tyranny with manners. Oh that we would have the 
courage to do that which is unpopular but that which we feel is right 
and constitutional.''
  Heston went on to say that ``political correctness is today's pocket 
change, but that courage is the currency of history.''
  So if we give in to political expediency, we will be crying out in 
this Nation for the want of another nail, the little things that can 
bring down a nation. Which brings me to the second issue, protecting 
the rights of our citizens.
  The Constitution is the document free men wrote with the central 
purpose in mind of protecting God-given rights. And let us never weaken 
in that defense. Because the most important of these rights to be 
protected by government is the right to life.
  And this is why have I been such a staunch defender of the rights of 
the unborn children. That child, that weakest citizen among us, is the 
most important and most needy when it comes to having a fair and 
impartial government to protect his or her life.
  Simply put, that is why I speak out in defense of the unborn. And if 
you believe that life begins before birth, then government has a 
responsibility to protect that life. It is the first rule of law.
  Mr. Speaker, I am also a very outspoken defender of the second 
amendment. I am a defender of all of the Bill of Rights, but it seems 
to me that the second amendment is the one that is actually under 
political attack most often. It is under political attack through 
political correctness, through massive marches, and just through the 
shear emotionalism that is reigning today.
  No American takes lightly the threat of violence, and no American can 
ignore the issue of crime and personal safety. No American can dismiss 
the violence that has erupted in our schools. But to say the problem 
with crime and violence is the availability of guns is to cop out with 
an easy answer.
  The problem is not the inanimate or the things or the guns or the 
knives or whatever else, it is a person who will casually use these 
objects to plunder or hurt or kill other persons.
  To diminish our right to keep and bear arms by entangling us in more 
gun control is to want to loose yet another nail that may ultimately 
destroy our Nation.
  It was precisely that danger that George Mason in 1788 wrote about 
and addressed this Nation when he addressed the Congress then and he 
said, ``When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great 
Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man, who was 
governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people, that it was the best 
and most effectual way to enslave them, but that they should not do it 
openly but just weaken them and let them sink gradually.''
  Well, is that not the picture of gun control? But addressing the 
human factor is much more difficult than taking things away.
  I find it amazing, for instance, that some of these same people who 
make the most noise about limiting their fellow American's second 
amendment rights are those same entertainment industry leaders who 
produce music, movies, and video games that glorify violence and debase 
our values. They, in essence, pit one basic right, one freedom of 
expression against another.
  I find it amazing, Mr. Speaker, and I find it amazingly cynical. And 
yet where is the outrage over this? Rather than simply control 
themselves, the Hollywood moguls and the product they produce, they 
want to take the constitutionally guaranteed rights away from all their 
fellow men. It is cynical. It is selfish. It is short sighted, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Let us seek solutions to our problems, but let us do it in a way that 
respects the rights of all of our citizens. Those rights are so 
essential.
  Another early debate in which I became involved is centered around 
the efforts to reform the writ of habeas corpus and the rights under 
habeas corpus, that great writ.
  It pained me, Mr. Speaker, to take a position in opposition of some 
of those great committee chairmen, some of my colleagues for whom I 
have enormous respect. But I fought against a proposal that sought to 
punish terrorists but which would cause ordinary citizens to lose their 
constitutionally guaranteed rights against search and seizure.
  So the rights to speak and assemble freely, to be ensured of due 
process of law, and to be protected against false imprisonment belong 
to all Americans. We cannot allow ourselves to be frightened by one 
issue into giving up all of these freedoms or taking them away from our 
citizens.
  So what Thomas Paine said in 1795 is as true today as it ever was 
before. Thomas Paine said, ``He that would make his own liberty secure 
must guard even his enemy from oppression.''
  I remembered that expression by Thomas Paine when I joined my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle to protect this profoundly 
important right of Americans.
  To protect our rights, we give the government very powerful law 
enforcement powers. These powers are what enables society to move away 
from the concept of making might right.
  A fair and responsible authority is supposed to act to protect our 
rights and to punish transgressors. But what happens when these law 
enforcement agencies themselves abuse the law or act in ways that cause 
distrust in the minds the very people they are supposed to be serving 
and protecting?
  And this is what happened in a remote part of my district shortly 
before I was elected. It happened in a place called Ruby Ridge. Men who 
were supposed to protect people's rights and their lives instead 
perverted their mission into a bizarre siege of a man and his family.
  Admittedly, the man held some unpopular opinions. But in a land where 
a person's right to his own opinion constitutes the first amendment, 
that is no justification for the killings of Randy Weaver's young son 
and the killing of his wife, Vicky, who held nothing more threatening 
in her arms than her infant 10-month-old daughter.
  Mr. Speaker, this was a sad day in America; and this is an outrageous 
abuse of law enforcement power. And it did much more damage to us than 
the personal tragedies of the killings in this incident. It began to 
kill the trust and the respect that many Americans had for their 
government, and we reaped the whirlwind in the years that followed.
  I think of Waco and I think of the seizure of Elian Gonzales, and it 
all

[[Page 21768]]

amounts to the fact that we are beginning to numb America's senses to 
the outrage against the intrusion of Federal law enforcement in our 
homes and the security of our properties.
  In the years ahead, Mr. Speaker, it is one of my most fervent hopes 
that my colleagues will continue to be ever vigilant against the 
possibility of anything like that ever happening again.

                              {time}  1530

  Mr. Speaker, as important as it is to protect the rights of our 
people, it is also important to protect their property. The right to 
own property, to keep that for which you labor, is perhaps the essence 
of a really truly free society. And it is one of the most essential 
roles of government, to protect private property. In fact, John Adams 
said that property is as sovereign as the laws of God, and that there 
must be a force of law and justice to protect property. Without 
property, Adams said, liberty cannot exist. And now with this Nation 
owning or controlling in the 40 percentile of this entire land base, we 
have to ask in this generation what has happened to our property 
rights? To own our property has been something that has allowed America 
to grow, to become a Nation that has been able to produce for its 
people the greatest standard of living in the history of civilization.
  Over the centuries, many students of human nature have commented on 
the tendency of man to ignore other people's property rights if it 
suits his own individual interests. One of the philosophers whom I most 
admire was a Frenchman named Frederick Bastiat. If one of the signs of 
genius is to be able to distill complex ideas into a short, easily 
understandable form, then Bastiat was, by definition, a genius because 
in 1850 he published a little book, it is only 75 pages long, called 
``The Law.'' It is such an influential and important work that I 
actually require anyone who wants to work in my congressional office to 
read this book and to write an essay or a book report on their 
reactions to it so I can read their essay before I interview them. 
Bastiat was able to distill what the relationship between the governed 
and the governors really should be.
  With regards to property, Bastiat wrote this:
  ``Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the 
ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This 
process is the origin of property.
  ``But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by 
seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process 
is the origin of plunder.
  ``Now, since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain --and since 
labor in and of itself is pain--it follows that men will resort to 
plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite 
clearly. Under these conditions, neither religion or morality can stop 
it.''
  Bastiat continues:
  ``When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more 
painful and more dangerous than labor.
  ``It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the 
power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder 
instead of work. All the measures of the law should protect property 
and punish plunder.
  ``But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And 
since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a 
dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the 
laws.
  ``This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the 
heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, 
explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to 
understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the 
invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is 
used by the legislator to destroy, in varying degrees among the rest of 
the people, to destroy their personal independence by slavery, to 
destroy their liberty by oppression, and to destroy their property by 
plunder.
  ``This is done by the person who makes the law, and in proportion to 
the power that he holds.''
  Well, those were very interesting words by Bastiat, words that really 
go deep in my soul. And so you see in a representative democracy such 
as ours, we are more insulated from the whims of a single person or a 
single class of people than were the citizens of France in the mid-19th 
century. Yet I think it is foolish if we ignore human nature, and I 
think it is even more foolish if we ignore the nature of government to 
by nature grow more powerful and bigger and more oppressive. There are 
certain classes of citizens who, still today, seek to gain political 
power in order to take advantage of the labor of others, and they use 
the power of big government to do just exactly that.
  Bastiat goes on to argue that men naturally rebel against the 
injustice of which they are victims. ``Thus,'' he says, ``when plunder 
is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the 
plundered classes try somehow to enter, by peaceful or revolutionary 
means, into the making of laws. According to their degree of 
enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely 
different purposes when they attempt to obtain political power: One, 
either they must wish to stop lawful plunder; or, two, they may wish to 
share in it.
  ``Woe to the Nation when this latter purpose prevails.''
  Mr. Speaker, we see today American citizens being plundered by other 
American citizens for a wide variety of purposes. We see Americans 
paying higher cumulative taxes than ever before to sustain programs 
that channel wealth from one class to another, or from one person to 
another. We see some of the leaders of this Nation proclaiming that 
some Americans are just too wealthy and that they do not deserve to be 
treated fairly and equitably under the law. We see class warfare 
motivated by personal envy. We see some citizens who live in populous 
parts of the country decide they want to take land from some people in 
the less populous western States and they argue that they want this 
land not for personal wealth but for aesthetic purposes or aboriginal 
purposes. But the end result is still the same: They are actually 
taking something from someone else and they are locking other Americans 
out of their beloved land.
  We see a concerted, shortsighted effort on the part of some to 
seemingly attack the sources of original wealth in this Nation. And we 
know that it is a combination of land, labor and capital, only land, 
labor and capital, that creates original wealth. Yet that is being 
exploded apart with the seizure of our land.
  In a time in which the new economy provides fabulous wealth overnight 
based on the trading of information, we are forgetting that all 
original wealth originates in the land. Wealth is created by the proper 
combination of land, property, and labor and capital, no more, no less. 
Wealth comes first from the things that we mine or mill or harvest, and 
without those things there can be no stock markets and no information 
superhighways and no bridges to the future.
  But, Mr. Speaker, we are today turning our backs on this original 
wealth. To hear the way some would talk, you would think that mining 
minerals from the Earth or harvesting crops, including timber and 
raising livestock, are somehow morally reprehensible and wrong. 
Instead, our natural resources are the sources of our economic strength 
which built this country, which in turn became magnified and powerful 
through the strength of our economy.
  President Theodore Roosevelt, commonly referred to as the father of 
today's environmental movement, said in a speech to the American 
Society of Foresters way back in 1903:
  ``First and foremost,'' Roosevelt said, ``you can never afford to 
forget for one moment what is the object of our forest policy. That 
object is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful, 
though that is good in and of itself, nor because they are refuges for 
the wild creatures of the wilderness, though that, too, is good in 
itself; but the primary object of our forest policy, as of the land 
policy of the United States of America, is the making of

[[Page 21769]]

prosperous homes. It is part of the traditional policy of home-making 
of our country. Every other consideration comes as secondary. The whole 
effort of the government in dealing with the forests must be directed 
to this end, keeping in view the fact that it is not only necessary to 
start the homes as prosperous but to keep them so.''
  He went on to say, ``Your attention must be directed to the 
preservation of the forests not, as an end in and of itself, but as a 
means of preserving and increasing the prosperity of this Nation. 
Forestry is the preservation of forests by wise use of the forests.''
  But those who call themselves environmentalists today would have 
turned their backs on Roosevelt's vision. What has happened when we 
impose an extreme and narrow political policy on our natural resources? 
We have this year experienced catastrophic wildfires, burning more 
board feet this year of timber than we have ever logged off our 
national forests. That is sheer waste. That is sheer destruction.
  We must not cut off our noses to spite our face, Mr. Speaker. We must 
responsibly use and promote these industries. We must be wise stewards 
of our Earth and our resources. But those resources are there for us to 
use.
  Just as there are some citizens who would plunder other citizens, 
there are other nations in this world who would seek unfair advantages 
from us, this great Nation. We must protect our Nation's interests and 
our national sovereignty. Sovereignty forms the fourth cornerstone of 
the policies that I have advocated. Just as with any community, there 
is a global community, and we should and do try to be a good and 
responsible neighbor in that community. Yet there are those who would 
argue that we are such a part of this global community that we can lose 
our identity and that people in other nations should have a voice in 
such matters as our own land policies or consumer protection laws or 
our judicial systems. That goes beyond being a good neighbor into 
becoming the neighborhood's doormat. Let America never become the 
global doormat.
  That is why I and some of my colleagues put up such a fight over such 
seemingly small issues as World Heritage Site designations and the Man 
in the Biosphere programs of the United Nations. These are the 
neighborhood's busybodies, offering their opinions on the state of our 
yards and gardens. Everyone welcomes praise, but when the praise starts 
to turn into a sanctioning of what we may and may not do, a bright line 
has been crossed, a bright line has been crossed and an invasion into 
our sovereignty.
  In the recent film about the American Revolution entitled ``The 
Patriot,'' I saw that and I think everyone, Mr. Speaker, in this body 
should view the movie ``The Patriot.'' It would remind everyone here in 
this body why we are here. The main character in that film rose and 
asked a body of his compatriots, ``Would you be ruled by one tyrant 
3,000 miles away or by 3,000 tyrants one mile away?''
  Mr. Speaker, we now seem to face the prospect of thousands of would-
be tyrants trying to rule us from all around the world. Nowhere is the 
fight to preserve our national sovereignty more important than in 
preserving our national security. I have often said that in my heart of 
hearts I really am a dove. But I want America to be the best armed dove 
on the planet. George Washington said it more eloquently when he said, 
``To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of 
preserving the peace.'' And Ronald Reagan carried that out effectively.

                              {time}  1545

  Sadly, we have allowed the readiness of our military to deteriorate 
badly. Training missions are compromised by tight budgets, we have 
military families eligible for food stamps, and retention levels are 
becoming difficult to maintain. And we often fail to meet our duty to 
our past warriors, our veterans, those great Americans. We provide them 
with inadequate health services. We dishonor them with neglect. In my 
home State of Idaho, we have not even provided them with a specific 
field of honor in which to lie when they pass on to the next world.
  I am very pleased to report, Mr. Speaker, that as one of my proudest 
accomplishments, it does look like we will have that field of honor for 
our brave military veterans soon under construction at a place in Idaho 
just outside of Boise.
  But we must be very careful that we do not trade away our national 
sovereignty in some ill-considered effort to become popular with the 
rest of the world. Our military exists to protect American land and 
vital American interests. We cannot bully the rest of the world into 
behaving like we do. But I just cringe when I think of American 
soldiers serving under foreign command, and I think that should never, 
never happen.
  And when it comes to protecting our sovereignty, we must not 
compromise our internal laws to suit foreign interests, nor must we 
allow our thirst for trade with other nations to allow us to ignore the 
aggressive and threatening natures of some of our other neighbors in 
this global community. And we certainly must not casually give away any 
more of our important strategic assets, whether they be the secrets to 
our most powerful weapons, or important avenues for commercial and 
military traffic, such as the Panama Canal, which is now being run by 
the Red Chinese in violation of the Panama Canal Treaty. The Red 
Chinese are now piloting our ships through the Panama Canal.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my belief and has been my work for the past years 
and will continue after I leave Congress, to defend these four 
cornerstones of freedom. This is the most important job that we have as 
legislators, to preserve the lives, the liberty and the property of our 
fellow citizens, and to protect our national sovereignty.
  There has, however, been an almost inexorable trend against those 
unalienable rights. There is no mistake in my mind that those rights 
have weakened as our Federal Government has grown bigger and stronger. 
The efforts that work against those rights often come clothed in 
garments of good intentions.
  When we seek to remedy some problem through the expansion or 
consolidation of power into a smaller set of hands, remember the words 
of Lord Acton, that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts 
absolutely.
  That corruption will twist and bend the law away from what our 
Founding Fathers intended and into something future generations will 
regret and future generations would suffer under.
  So, Mr. Speaker and my fellow Members of Congress, it has been a 
great privilege to serve in this body, this great body representing 
this great land, this powerful government of the people, by the people 
and for the people. I hope that you will remember my words, and I hope 
that you will remember the lofty, yet very simple reason that we are 
here. And years hence, when some colleague takes the floor of this 
magnificent Chamber and speaks out for the cause of freedom and 
liberty, I hope that you will take those words to heart.

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