[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13532]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          HONORING JOHN MEHRMANN OF MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bradley) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BRADLEY of New Hampshire. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor 
Manchester's John Mehrmann, New Hampshire's winner of the VFW Voice of 
Democracy Scholarship Contest. This contest is held each year to give 
high school students the opportunity to voice their opinion on their 
responsibility to our country.
  The following is Mr. Mehrmann's essay, which I found both compelling 
and profound, and which is why I want to read it on the floor of the 
United States Congress.
  ``We were just kids. All our lives, everything was perfect; 
everything worked. Everything was planned. We went to school. We came 
home. We slept. And somewhere along the road of our lives, we would 
graduate from school. After graduating from school, we would go to a 
new school, we would come home, and we would sleep. There was nothing 
to fear; there would always be food in the fridge and gas in the car. 
Every time we flicked the light switch, there would be light.
  ``Then something happened. Suddenly something, somehow, someway, 
somewhere shattered. As the dust settled and the magnitude of what we 
had lost became clear, it wasn't the death of an age for us, and it 
wasn't the death of jokes. But as we walked across the street or 
through the halls or drove our cars, something was different. The world 
was smaller that day. And all the faces, you with your expensive car, 
or you who always had something important to say, they all looked so 
much alike. They didn't all have the same hair color or the number of 
freckles. Some had straight teeth and some had big chins.

                              {time}  1900

  But they were all sad, all thinking. Innocence died that day, the 
innocence that let us worry about the grades or the pimples on our 
noses, the freedom to do what we wanted, when we wanted, was lost 
somewhere in 100 stories of broken steel and dust. We didn't grow up 
when we got our driver's licenses, and we didn't grow up when we got 
our first jobs, or even when we turned 18. We all grew up when we had 
to.
  We heard a lot of talk after our abrupt maturation about freedom and 
responsibility. There were a lot of speeches, and everyone seemed very 
serious. But mostly, we knew. We knew we could never be kids again. We 
finally realized what it meant to be responsible. Being responsible was 
doing our best, even when no one was watching. The responsibility 
thrust on some of us unexpectedly one late summer morning opened our 
eyes. We learned to think with our minds and feel with our hearts. Now 
the people we heard speaking French or Swahili when we came to school 
each day weren't foreign, they were victims of reality, like the rest 
of us.
  We never knew how or when we would grow up. We didn't know why we had 
to. We saw the photos and the film clips of men and women leaping from 
flames only to careen hundreds of feet to their deaths. Again and 
again, we saw the missiles which we had all thought so harmless piloted 
to murder what could have been our entire school in an instant.
  Freedom wasn't a badge. Freedom isn't a badge. It isn't a prize 
trophy to be flaunted and waved in the faces of the enslaved. Freedom 
is a burden, but a burden worth its price. Responsibility is the price 
of freedom. Freedom does not unequivocally allow for self-indulgence. 
Self-indulgence and selfishness are not responsible, and it is 
irresponsible to self-perpetuate at anyone's expense.
  We think identities to be so important, and we imagine our lives to 
be so worthy of greatness that we forget the community of mankind of 
which we are so preciously minuscule a part.
  Obsequiousness and submission are not the stigmas they were before 
adolescence was made extinct. Freedom is not a right to individuality 
but a right to community. It is a right of individuals to determine 
their sociality within the bounds of a world not limited to oceans or 
lines drawn on a map, but one which spans the entirety of a globe, 
encompassing a myriad of peoples with innumerable concerns. It is the 
responsibility of the world's free people to determine which concerns 
take precedence. The free peoples of the world must recognize the 
greater good for which to strive. Absolute singularity is no longer an 
option.
  These are the words of John Mehrmann of New Hampshire.

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