[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Page 26277]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 26277]]

   FORMER VICE PRESIDENT WALTER F. MONDALE'S REMARKS AT WESTMINSTER 
                          PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

  Mr. DAYTON. Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, one of 
Minnesota's greatest Senators and statesmen, recently spoke in 
Minneapolis at Westminster Presbyterian Church, of which I am a member. 
I found his insights into our country's present situation and our 
current deliberations to be most valuable. I ask unanimous consent to 
print the former Vice President's speech in the Record for the benefit 
of all my colleagues.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

     Westminster Presbyterian Church Forum Speech by Walter Mondale

       Thanks, Pastor Hart-Anderson for that kind introduction and 
     thanks for your gifted leadership of this wonderful 
     congregation. Joan and I are glad to be members of 
     Westminster.
       I love this magnificent and historic sanctuary where we 
     meet today. It was 1897--104 years ago--when Westminster 
     congregants first gathered here.
       Some of the men who came to worship here in those first 
     days may well have been veterans of the Civil War; some may 
     have fought at Gettysburg. Seventeen years after that first 
     service, the first boat passed through the new Panama Canal 
     and World War I broke out in Europe. And can you imagine how 
     parishioners must have felt as they worshipped here that grim 
     Sunday morning of December 7th, 1941?
       Westminster has also lived through profound changes in our 
     Minneapolis community. From its beginning at the center of 
     the Presbyterian community living nearby, the church has 
     lived through the hollowing-out of Minneapolis's central 
     city, then, thankfully, its revitalization into a bustling 
     and diverse downtown neighborhood.
       Today, Westminster is on its feet, growing, adapting, 
     serving its faith in a community that the congregation's 
     first members could not have imagined. For more than a 
     century, we have seen it all.

                           *   *   *   *   *

       A foreign correspondent recently wrote that what struck him 
     the most about America was that we all seemed to have a sense 
     of ownership in our country. He's right--we do own our 
     country.
       That's why we all came together, in an instant, on 
     September 11.
       That unity is no coincidence * * * it flows from our 
     American ideals of justice, openness and freedom. That unity 
     is by choice, not by chance. Almost every American 
     generation, when pressed by crisis, has had to renew that 
     choice and defend our ideals--not only abroad, but here at 
     home.
       Abolitionists argued that slavery was immoral, and soldiers 
     fought a war to end it . . . the suffragists struggled for 
     women's right to vote . . . the civil rights movements 
     persuaded us that all Americans must be free from 
     discrimination . . . the women's movement profoundly enhanced 
     opportunities for American women . . . and, at our best, we 
     have reached out to make American life more open and 
     accepting to everyone.
       Roosevelt once said that America's great goal has been ``to 
     include the excluded.'' I believe that's what we have done.
       I was a part of the civil rights struggle and served in the 
     Senate when many of the key civil rights law were passed. I 
     worked under a president who was the first southerner elected 
     to the office in 120 years . . . elected, in part, because a 
     southerner could finally champion civil rights and bring our 
     Nation closer together.
       It all came together for more at the 1984 Los Angeles 
     Olympics. Civil rights laws had knocked down the barriers to 
     black and Hispanic participation in sports. And we had 
     recently passed title nine, over huge objections, which 
     required schools receiving public money to provide equal 
     athletic opportunities for young women.
       When I watched American athletes of all colors, men and 
     women, winning one gold medal after another and astounding 
     the world, I saw our Nation's long march toward openness and 
     justice being justified right before our eyes. America was 
     the best because we had tapped all of our talent.
       The wonderful American historian, Stephen Ambrose, spoke in 
     Minneapolis the other day about the long-term prospects for 
     America versus Bin Laden and his fellow extremists.
       America has a great advantage, Ambrose said. In today's 
     world the trained mind is the most valuable of all assets. In 
     America, we tap all of our talent, while the Taliban and 
     other medievalists shut it off--by closing the door to women, 
     by requiring you men to spend all of their time repeating 
     extremists doctrines by rote, and by suppressing science and 
     debate.
       By wasting their good minds, they will fail, Ambrose said.
       Just as we saw America prevail at the '84 Olympics by 
     tapping all our talent, we will see our openness and freedom 
     give us the edge in this newer, grimmer challenge.
       And we have another advantage.
       Roger Cohen, a senior New York times European 
     correspondent, recently wrote that ``Hitler promised the 
     1,000 year Reich; Communism promised equality; Milosovich 
     promised glory. All the West Offers is the rule of law, but 
     that's enough.
       Under our constitution, the rule of law has meant that our 
     public officers must be accountable to the law: this idea 
     runs throughout our system.
       The House and the Senate account to each other; the 
     Congress to the President, the President to the Congress, 
     both to the courts, and to the American people; a prosecutor 
     to the judge (appointed for life) and jury and all of it 
     subject to appeal. It is one of the great paradoxes of that 
     document: on the one hand, the constitution reveals our 
     founders' abiding faith in democracy--in the people, while on 
     the other hand, the framers were very suspicious of human 
     nature when clothed with unaccountable power. This principle 
     is not a detail; it is crucial to America's phenomenal 
     success.
       Our founders made this very clear in the remarkable 
     federalist papers. In them, Madison, and Hamilton famously 
     observed: ``What is government itself, but the greatest of 
     all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no 
     government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, 
     neither external nor internal controls on government would be 
     necessary, but in framing a government which is to be 
     administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in 
     this: you must first enable the government to control the 
     governed; and in the next lace oblige it to control itself . 
     . . . . a dependence on the people, is no doubt, the primary 
     control on government; but experience has taught mankind the 
     necessity of auxiliary precautions.''
       Maintaining the rule of law takes a lot of nerve. And over 
     our history we have occasionally lost it during moments of 
     great threat.
       In 1798, Congress passed the notorious alien and sedition 
     acts. David McCullough in his marvelous new history of John 
     Adams, wrote that President Adams' signatures on the those 
     bills were ``the most reprehensive acts of his presidency.'' 
     During the Civil War, President Lincoln abolished the writ of 
     habeas corpus. In World War I, Minnesota established the 
     shameful public safety commission, which held public hearings 
     all over the state to test the loyalty of German-American 
     Minnesotans and remove the doubtful from office. At the 
     beginning of World War II, Federal officials arrested 
     thousands of Japanese-Americans and herded them into 
     ``relocation'' camps without any credible evidence of 
     disloyalty. during the worst of the Cold War, Joe McCarthy 
     panicked our Nation and during the turbulent days of the 
     civil rights struggle, F.B.I. Directors, Hoover, decided that 
     Martin Luther King was a dangerous man who needed to be 
     hounded daily and destroyed as a public leader--even though 
     King's message of nonviolence may have saved our Nation.
       In all of these cases, after we had regained our 
     confidence, we could see that we had allowed our fear to get 
     the better of us, and that we had hurt innocent people, 
     compromised our ideals and shamed ourselves.
       Today we again have much to fear.
       These are tough times and they require decisive action. We 
     must find and punish our attackers, and make clear that 
     aggression against our country will not be tolerated. We must 
     also try to prevent future terrorism, by learning much more 
     about the threats around and among us. We must give our 
     intelligence and law enforcement agencies the resources and 
     authority they need to do these difficult jobs.
       But we can be vigilant and deceive without giving in to 
     fear. We can do everything we need to do to protect ourselves 
     within our constitution, and we will be stronger if we do so. 
     For history has taught us over and over again that the rule 
     of law, openness and tolerance will prevail over injustice, 
     oppression and hate.
       It is our great advantage.
       Thank you.

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