[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 1092-1096]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   DIFFERENCES IN POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fortenberry). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Tancredo) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it has been a pleasure to be sitting here 
listening to these fine presentations. I believe that these folks that 
are still watching this evening are truly privileged to hear the kinds 
of concerns that have been expressed and, I think, the words that have 
been so eloquently provided to us this evening about our efforts in 
Iraq.
  However, sitting there it does seem to me to be kind of interesting 
to think about all the people who we know are not feeling all that well 
about what has happened, all the folks around the world who watched the 
election on Sunday and thought, oh, Brother, now what are we going to 
do.
  This is not good news to a lot of folks. Certainly, I guess President 
Chirac, many of the French people themselves, the French Government, 
Michael Moore, other members of the looney left in California and 
Hollywood, Barbra Streisand, the Syrians and Al Jazeera and Osama bin 
Laden and Dan Rather and many parts of the United Nations, the 
Baathists in Iraq. There are a whole bunch of people who are upset 
about what happened, and we tend to think of them as being peculiar in 
many ways or at least that they are folks who are so far out in the 
left that their opinions are completely and totally skewed by their 
political ideology. That is true; that is the case.
  I was struck just the other day by something that happened in 
Colorado, my home State, where a professor at the University of 
Colorado, a tenured professor who was the chair of the ethnic studies 
department, in and of itself I think a questionable line of academic 
inquiry, but nonetheless something that the University of Colorado saw 
fit to confer that kind of status upon, having an actual Department of 
Ethnic Studies, and this gentleman, the chairman of that department by 
the name of Ward Churchill made some comments that were picked up as a 
result of the fact that he was going to be speaking at a college in New 
York State, Hamilton College, and his comments were repeated in the 
media in the last couple of days.

[[Page 1093]]

  Among other things, what Mr. Churchill, this professor, a tenured 
professor at the University of Colorado, said was that the people who 
worked and died in the World Trade Towers were ``little Eichmanns'' 
because they were part of this huge bureaucracy of trade and that they 
were facilitating essentially the engine of world capitalism, which to 
him made them ``little Eichmanns.''
  I mean, this is a guy, remember, who holds a position of academic 
authority, who is paid a handsome salary; and if we look at his own 
academic background, we come away wondering how he ever got hired at 
any university, let alone the flagship institution, University of 
Colorado. He may have someplace, somewhere gotten a job teaching at a 
middle school that was in dire need of a social studies professor, but 
one cannot imagine when they look at his background that he could 
actually get a position like the one he holds.

                              {time}  2215

  Now he went on to say that, ``True, these people were citizens of a 
sort. But innocent?'' He said, ``Innocent? Give me a break.''
  They deserved to die. Those are the words I am adding here. They 
deserved to die. I guess he was saying they were not innocent and we 
should not, therefore, be concerned about the fact that 3,000 or more 
died in that event.
  A lot of people in the State of Colorado have called for him to 
resign; others have called for the University of Colorado to dismiss 
him. Of course, that is not going to happen. We know no university 
today would dismiss someone for saying something so incredibly 
ludicrous or outrageous. And if they did, of course, he would sue. He 
would go to court and claim that he has a right to say what he has said 
because he is exercising his first amendment rights. And then they 
would talk about the fact that he has tenure and he is protected under 
that situation.
  And in a way, I agree. In a way, I think it is right. In fact, I have 
chosen not to join the chorus of those people who are demanding that he 
be removed. I think what Mr. Churchill offers to us is a great example 
of what we on the conservative side of the aisle here and the 
conservative side of American politics have been talking about for a 
long time as a problem in our university system, in the halls of 
academe in general. They have been taken over by the loony left.
  Mr. Churchill is a perfect example of the loony left. He is perhaps 
the looniest of the loony left and so, therefore, I want him to 
continue to speak out. I like listening to him. I hate what he has to 
say, but I like the fact that people are seeing and judging for 
themselves what is happening in our institutions of higher education, 
because he is an example. He is an example not just of what is 
happening at the University of Colorado or even in the major 
institutions in the United States. He is an example of a philosophy 
that permeates those halls of academe. It is a hatred of America, down 
deep, a hatred for everything we are and everything we stand for that 
he exemplifies.
  And it is the same thing with all the people I mentioned earlier who 
look at what happened on Sunday and down deep they feel very, very, 
very worried, very upset. They cannot really get over the fact that the 
seeds of democracy were planted in Iraq. They were even nourished by 
the blood of many wonderful American servicemen and women and certainly 
by the blood of thousands and thousands of Iraqi citizens.
  They were hopeful that, in fact, we would fail, that the whole 
experiment would fail. They were hopeful that we could not claim any 
degree of moral superiority, that we could not claim the high ground, 
the moral high ground, because, in a way, they hate America. They hate 
the institutions we have established. They hate the freedom that we 
enjoy. They hate the economic system that we have established. They 
hate George Bush. They hate the political party he represents.
  The other day, I understand that the individual running for the 
chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee said ``I hate 
Republicans and everything they stand for.'' Hate. Howard Dean. Well, I 
wonder how Mr. Dean felt. I wonder how he felt down deep. I wonder even 
how John Kerry felt down deep.
  I wonder how some of our colleagues here in the House felt when they 
saw that the seeds had been planted, they were sprouting and that 
democracy has a chance, that it may in fact spread throughout the 
Middle East, that it is possible. We can now begin to hope for it in a 
way we could not have dreamt about a year ago and that the President's 
idea about the basic nature of man is right.
  Rousseau, long ago, stated, ``Man is born free and everywhere he is 
in chains.'' And this essence that there is something in every human 
being, and the President has spoken of this very eloquently and 
forcefully on many occasions, that there is something in every human 
being that strives and yearns for freedom. Yet we look around the world 
and we see so many people who are incapable of achieving it because of 
the governmental system that is imposed upon them.
  Maybe that is, in fact, a great threat to the United States, as the 
President has said. Regardless, the fact is that on Sunday something 
happened. And regardless of where we are in the political spectrum, we 
should acknowledge the fact that it did happen and that millions and 
millions of people in Iraq are now able to think about themselves as 
the Founding Fathers and Mothers of a new country.
  Now I prefaced my remarks tonight with a description of what I 
consider to be the loony left and how they reacted to this and how the 
``Hate America Crowd'' in the United States and throughout the world 
reacted to the events of Sunday. I want to expand upon that a little 
bit, because this is a topic that is, I think, of enormous importance 
to the United States. It will have a great effect on where we go and 
how we get there and, in fact, what we are able to achieve in this 
world.
  It is also affected by a variety of things we do in a policy sense. 
And, of course, I will talk about the issue of massive immigration into 
this country and how this is going to affect the situation that I have 
described, the kind of task we have ahead of us to establish who we are 
as a Nation and where we are going and how we are going to get there.
  There is in the country, and throughout the world of course, but 
certainly in the United States there is something I refer to as the 
cult of multicultural-
ism. This is exemplified by people like Mr. Churchill, who really and 
truly despise America down deep. They despise who we are. They would 
like to see a different America entirely, one that is not bound to any 
of the ideas or ideals upon which this country was founded. Why? 
Because those ideas and ideals were an expression of Western 
civilization.
  If in fact Western civilization was the underpinning or was the 
foundation of who and what we are and if that civilization was based 
upon a set of ideas put down on parchment originally, paper eventually, 
about the nature of man and his relationship to government and his 
relationship to his God, that if those things were done by white males, 
at some point back all the way to the Greeks, then there is something 
bad about it. There has to be something we can take issue with.
  Columbus, as I saw one time in a history textbook in a charter school 
in my district, as I was waiting for the classes to change, I picked up 
this ninth grade textbook, and thumbing through it I got to the chapter 
on the Founding of America, and it started out with the following 
sentence. And this was a declarative sentence. It was not a quote, it 
was not in italics, it was not a person's opinion, it was set out as 
the beginning of the chapter. ``Columbus Discovered America and 
Destroyed Paradise.''
  Now that was the textbook's analysis. That is what children read. 
That is what we teach them: There is nothing of value in the United 
States. There is nothing of value in our history, that we are a product 
of a corrupt system and mode of thought, and everything that stems from 
it has got to be derided and debased. That is what

[[Page 1094]]

we tell our children, and that is what people like Mr. Churchill tell 
our students in his classes, who then in turn go and teach our children 
in the K-12 system.
  I want to mention an anecdote here, something that happened to me a 
few months ago. I was in a school in my district, in a county in my 
district that is a very wealthy county, one in which I do not live, I 
should hasten to add, but, nonetheless, a very wealthy county, where 
the schools are the best schools that we can provide in terms of the 
physical structure, in terms of all of the accoutrements that go along 
with education, the books, the materials, the overheads, everything 
that we could want, the highest paid teachers. So of course we assume 
they are the best; right?
  It was a brand new high school. It was a brand new high school, and I 
was asked to go and speak. It was a school where there were 250 some 
students, and they came into the auditorium and we had a 15-, 20-minute 
chat and then they started sending up questions.
  The very first question I received was: What do you think is the most 
serious challenge or problem facing the United States? I said, well, 
before I answer that, I am going to ask you all a question, 250 
students assembled there. I said, How many of you believe you live in 
the greatest country in the world?
  Now, let me tell you, generally speaking, certainly when I was in 
school, and even for a long time thereafter, when you asked a student 
something like that in a junior or senior high, there would be a 
reaction sort of like, well, you know, they are talking about my team. 
So there is a natural reaction of exuberance and enthusiasm. They would 
say, yea, absolutely, it is great, it is wonderful, our school is 
wonderful, our team is wonderful, our country is wonderful.
  So I said, how many people here believe you live in the greatest 
nation in the world? What followed was not the typical reaction that 
you expect from a group of high school students. There was this 
sheepish, this very tenuous, this very sort of scary silence as they 
looked at the teachers who were lined up on either side of the 
auditorium and the principal who was standing by me.
  Finally, about two dozen raised their hands, again very, very 
sheepishly, cautiously. Nobody did anything exuberantly. Nobody. Not a 
single person jumped up or gave a feeling of, again, this kind of 
exuberance about yeah, absolutely, it is my school, my country, my 
State, it is all great. You know how kids are. No, they did not do 
that.
  Something had happened in their life. Something had happened prior to 
their coming into that auditorium that made them very trepidatious 
about saying it. And I determined from that that it was not as a result 
of the fact that the other 225 or so students hated America. I do not 
think that is true at all. What I do believe is that they were 
completely and totally incapable of affirming that statement. They were 
afraid to raise their hands for fear that someone would actually say, 
``oh yeah, why do you think so?''
  They could not affirm it, so they simply wanted to sit there, afraid 
to say anything, the children of this country, the children in one of 
the most affluent areas, with all of the amenities that could ever be 
given to anyone, tan from the slopes at Aspen, wearing the best 
clothes, driving all the nicest cars out in the parking lot, having all 
of these amenities, more things than have ever been given to any 
children on the face of the earth since the creation of mankind, and 
they enjoy it because of where they are, and I said, well, you know 
what, I think this is the most serious problem we are facing as a 
Nation.

                              {time}  2230

  I said to them, I do not have time to talk about all of the things 
that make this country wonderful. If you do not know it, I do not have 
time in this 20 minutes we have together to make you understand what 
this country is all about and why you should be proud of it and why in 
fact I think you can make the case it is the best place in the world. 
But I said, let me just leave you with this, and again I am talking 
with 9th, 10th, 11th graders, no 12th grade class yet in this new 
school. I said, just think of it this way, do you know anyone, have you 
ever heard of anyone who has escaped from the United States or from the 
West to say, Pakistan, for a better life? Have you ever been confronted 
by anybody who has escaped from the United States for a better life? 
They have escaped from the United States usually one step ahead of the 
law, that is true, I have no doubt about that. But if you raise the 
gates all over the world, where do people go? Do they go to Saudi 
Arabia? Do they go to South America? Do they go to Canada? They come to 
the West, including Canada and Western Europe. They come to the West. 
By the millions, Muslims come to the West to escape a worse situation, 
looking for freedom, both economic opportunity and religious freedom. 
They seek the West. They seek Western civilization, the thing Mr. 
Churchill derides.
  We can be proud. We should be proud of who we are and what we have 
been able to accomplish on this planet. It is certainly true that we 
have warts and we have done things wrong; and if we could do things 
over, I am sure we as a society, as a civilization, would do better. 
But the fact is above all those things, we have given the world ideas 
and ideals of great and enormous value starting with the rule of law, a 
uniquely Western concept. The rule of law, not of men.
  The idea of individual freedom and religious liberty, these are 
Western ideas. There is no reason to be ashamed. It does not mean we 
have to put down anybody else. It does not mean we have to seek the 
destruction of any other civilization. It simply says here is what we 
have done and we can be proud of it, and most of the world seeks it. In 
a begrudging way they seek it. Perhaps the strangest phenomenon we can 
imagine, the millions of people who come here from other countries, 
maybe with the intent of destroying us because we do not match their 
religious point of view, but coming here nonetheless for all of the 
benefits that Western civilization provides.
  We do not have to whitewash our past, neither do we have to degrade 
or debase it. If we do, there are consequences. The Ward Churchills of 
this world will succeed because they will have in their classrooms 
students who have never been confronted with the facts of life in terms 
of who we are as a society. They have never been taught about the 
things that we can and should be proud of as a civilization. They have 
only been taught that we should be ashamed of who we are, hence two 
dozen kids out of 250 in a high school in Douglas County, Colorado, two 
dozen sheepishly raised their hand and said yes, I kind of think we do.
  We are in a desperate battle as a civilization because I think we are 
in a clash of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington has pointed out in 
his book of that title. I think we must do everything possible in order 
to be successful in that clash to have our own people understand who we 
are. And whether you come here as a black man, a brown man, a white 
man, or anything in between, you can come here and accept the ideas and 
ideals of the American creed. It does not make you a Democrat, it does 
not make you a Republican, a liberal or a conservative. It makes you an 
American. And then we can start dividing up.
  But if we lose this whole idea of what it means to be an American, if 
that is not there from the beginning, all we are is a place on the 
planet made up of subgroups, of a balkanized culture, people who 
consider themselves to be something other, a hyphenated, something 
other than American.
  I had an interesting conversation with the Catholic bishop of Denver 
not too long ago, Bishop Gomez. During the conversation we were 
talking, and because I have a particular interest in the issue of 
immigration and I am concerned about massive immigration into the 
country when it meets up with this multi-culturalism, I have a strong 
concern what happens in the Nation when we do not integrate people into 
our society any more, when we tell them to keep their language. We tell 
them keep your culture, keep your customs, even

[[Page 1095]]

keep your political affiliation and loyalty to a country outside of the 
United States. We tell them that.
  I was concerned, and I expressed it, the fact that Iraqis were 
allowed to vote in the United States. I am not concerned about an Iraqi 
national voting in the United States, but the United Nations came into 
the United States, set up a voting system that allowed for American 
citizens of Iraqi descent to vote. American citizens should not be 
voting in any other country's elections, but we did it and we allowed 
the United Nations to set up the voting procedures.
  These kinds of things are of great concern to me because we do seem 
to be destroying the whole concept of citizenship with literally scores 
of millions of people coming into the country who have no desire to 
become American, and we tell them on the other hand that they should 
not.
  Bishop Gomez said to me, I do not see why you are so concerned about 
this, Congressman. He said, For instance, the Mexicans coming in, I can 
tell you right now, they do not want to be American.
  And I said, Well, Bishop, of course that is the problem. That is 
exactly the problem.
  Mr. Speaker, they do not want to be American, and we are telling them 
they should not be. We are telling them to keep their own language, to 
keep their own culture and their own political affiliations to a 
country other than the United States; and this will not accrue to our 
benefit, and it will not help us as a Nation. It will not help us 
defend ourselves in this clash of civilizations because we do not know 
who we are because we are just a group of people here on this place, on 
the planet. We are simply residents, that is all, not citizens, just 
residents. They have no affiliation, no loyalty, no concept of the 
oneness of the American creed, no appreciation for the history that got 
us here. Heaven knows, we would not want to say an appreciation for 
Western civilization.
  Not long ago I introduced a resolution into this body and it simply 
said that the Congress of the United States is encouraging schools 
throughout the country to make sure that students graduating be able to 
articulate an appreciation for Western civilization. It did not say you 
have to even like Western civilization. It just said you should be able 
to articulate an appreciation for it. Be a critical thinker. If 
somebody says what are the good things about Western civilization and 
what it has created here, be able to talk about it. Even if you 
disagree with who we are, at least be able to lay out the facts. That 
is what the essence of a good education would be, it seems to me.
  You cannot imagine the kind of push back I had on this. In fact, it 
never got to the floor of the House. The majority leader said I would 
not want to do something like that unless we can get some Democrats to 
go on it, it would be very scary. So we never did bring it to the 
floor, for fear of what people would say, for fear that somebody in 
this body would argue that we should not allow students to be able to 
articulate an appreciation for Western civilization.
  I went on to say that school boards throughout the United States 
should adopt this measure because all we can do here in Congress is say 
this is what we think should happen. I do not believe that the Federal 
Government should get involved in the creation of curricula, but I 
certainly believe we have the right to express ourselves. School boards 
have the right to totally decide it. They can say here is what we want 
our students to be. Here is the kind of student we want graduating from 
our school. And they can say, therefore, as a school board, we say 
these children will have to be able to articulate an appreciation of 
Western civilization when they come out of our school system.
  Members cannot imagine the kind of opposition and hatred expressed 
towards this idea, some by the NEA, the National, quote, Education 
Association, and I put it in quotes because the NEA has nothing to do 
with education and everything to do with indoctrination. But they hated 
the idea. We were not mandating it on anyone. I was just saying it was 
a good thing to be able to have students articulate an appreciation for 
Western civilization. If you go to our Web site, www.house.gov/tancredo 
and pull up Our Heritage, Our Hope, you will see a resolution that you 
can take to your State legislature or your school board and have them 
pass.
  If you just want to see a fascinating sort of debate go on, take the 
resolution, and we passed it in the State Senate in Colorado, by the 
way, after a horrendous and very heated debate. Just go ahead and take 
it to your school board, take it to your State house and see what 
happens with just that one simple concept.
  So it is true, Mr. Speaker, that I am deeply concerned about the many 
things that happen to this country as a result of massive immigration 
when it meshes with, connects with multi-culturalism. These are tough 
issues, they are not easy to explain, and they certainly do not fit on 
a bumper sticker. But they are important for us to think about.
  Mr. Huntington, who I mentioned earlier, has written another book 
which came out in May of 2004, and I think it is a wonderful analysis 
and asks the enormously important question as the title of book, ``Who 
Are We?'' Who are we?

                              {time}  2245

  He lays out the consequences if we do not know the answer. If we 
cannot understand who we are, if we cannot appreciate who we are, if we 
are just simply here, folks living on this chunk of land on the North 
American continent, that is all, then the clash of civilization is not 
going to be much of a clash. We will lose. We will lose. Because the 
people with whom we are at war know exactly who they are. We are not so 
sure, I am afraid. We are not so sure. And if students coming out of 
our school system, our public school system, are afraid to actually say 
yes to the question, Do you think you live in the greatest country in 
the world, why would they fight? And God bless those who do. God bless 
those who go into harm's way to defend us. How long can this last? If 
we do not know who we are, if we do not understand the values of 
Western civilization that are embodied in everything we see around us, 
in not only the architecture but the laws and the philosophy that we 
have in this country about the relationship between man and government 
and, yes, man and his God; if we do not appreciate these things, what 
makes us think they can possibly last? They will fall. Of course they 
will.
  That is why I spend as much time as I do talking about the issue of 
immigration. There are all kinds of other parts of this picture to talk 
about. Certainly the jobs issue, the displacement of American workers, 
the effect on our economy, the costs to our health care system, the 
incarceration rates, the cost of incarceration for the 25 percent of 
our prison populations who are not citizens. I could go on and on with 
the very practical problems that are presented by massive immigration 
when it combines with this cult of multi-culturalism. But the bigger 
picture is represented by people like Mr. Churchill, what he thinks and 
what he tells children and the fact that he is hired by institutions 
of, quote, higher education, to call the victims of 9/11 and the Twin 
Towers ``little Eichmanns.'' Mr. Churchill and Michael Moore and Dan 
Rather, this is what we reap. It is a scary thing for us, because the 
consequences are very serious.
  I will continue to speak out on this issue of immigration, of our 
national security. We talk about the national security implications of 
immigration and open borders. There are two ways to look at it. One is 
the very practical way that when the borders are open, when they are 
porous, people come across them, some of them to just work, some of 
them to sell drugs and the others to do things to us that are very bad. 
Some people come into this country for the purpose of killing us, 
killing our families. They choose the easiest way to get here, and that 
is across the borders because they are porous.

[[Page 1096]]

  Why are the borders porous? Not because we cannot control them, but 
because it is economically advantageous to certain groups in the 
country. Certainly employers, millions of employers in this country who 
rely on cheap labor, want those borders open. Other countries, Mexico 
is a great example of a country that has turned into not just a 
neighbor but now a lobbying agent to keep the borders open. Why? 
Because they receive $18 billion a year from their nationals who are 
working here sending money home, and they do not want the nationals to 
connect with America. They do not want them to become American. They 
want them to maintain their political and psychological allegiance to 
Mexico because they will continue to send money home to the country, 
and that is what now props up the country.
  $18 billion is now the second most significant source of income 
Mexico has, second only to Pemex, their oil company. It dwarfs 
everything else, including all foreign investment and including all 
tourism dollars spent in Mexico, remittances from the United States. It 
has changed the dynamics in the world. It has changed relationships 
between countries. There are seven nations in the world that presently 
take in more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product as a 
result of remittances from the United States from their nationals 
working here.
  It changes a lot of things. It creates employers in this country who 
get hooked on cheap labor demanding open borders. It creates 
governments in countries all over the world who get hooked on 
remittances demanding open borders and our own security is therefore 
left as a secondary or tertiary topic. So there is an absolute and 
total connection between immigration, open borders and our national 
security, but it does not just happen as a result of keeping those 
borders open so people will come across them with bombs or some sort of 
chemical or biological warfare agent. It is also a threat to our 
national security because when it combines with the cult of multi-
culturalism, it creates a very, very sharp dagger pointed right at the 
heart of America. So we have to understand it. We have to talk about 
it. We cannot be afraid to address it.
  Mr. Speaker, the most wonderful thing I can report to you tonight is 
that things are changing here. I came into this body 7 years ago. I 
would come to the floor as I have done tonight. I have tried to address 
this issue in every way I possibly could, the concerns about massive 
immigration, both legal and illegal into the country, the implications 
for us as a Nation, begging that it be debated. I created a caucus 
called the Immigration Reform Caucus, and I think there were 16 Members 
that originally signed on. There are now somewhere approaching 75 or 
80. There are Members who stand up now and talk about this issue who 
never touched it before. Why? Because they are hearing from their 
constituents, Mr. Speaker. Because this system is working. Because the 
American people are making their voices heard here in this body. It is 
a wonderful thing to see. It gives us hope for the future.
  And so I do think things will change. I do not know how quickly. I 
also know that we have an enormously difficult road ahead of us, 
because these Ward Churchills, these folks who comprise the loony left 
are, in fact, embedded in the system. They are in our institutions of 
higher education throughout the country, and their products are 
teaching the children in schools in my district and in yours. There is 
a lot of work ahead of us.
  But I have great hope in our ability to change things. After all, it 
is really our only option. What else can we do but try everything we 
can think of and to come on the floor night after night as I have done 
over these 7 years, many times thinking that no one was listening, that 
no one cared about the issue. I received some of the most nasty e-mail, 
letters and telephone calls from people calling me every name 
imaginable, some unimaginable. But that is changing. Now when I go back 
to my office, I hear the fax machines going even tonight, it is now 
almost 11 o'clock here in Washington, D.C., but there will be people 
who will respond to this. We get hundreds now, sometimes thousands, of 
responses, all from people saying, continue to do what you do. People 
from every walk of life, people from every ethnic background.
  This is not an issue that springs out of any sort of racial sort of 
motivation or profile, but it is an issue that everyone who calls 
themselves and thinks of himself or herself as an American, thinks of 
himself or herself as an American first, it is something that they are 
concerned about, and they have a right to be concerned. It is a 
dangerous situation we face. So we can fight a war in Iraq, and we can 
plant the seeds of democracy; but to ultimately be successful in this 
clash of civilization, we have to know who we are.
  And so I ask the President, I hope in his State of the Union message 
that we will hear on this floor tomorrow night, he will begin to 
articulate that, that he will begin to talk about the things that make 
us great, the things about which we can and should be proud, the things 
that we should promote, the ideas and ideals of the American creed, 
ideas and ideals that can be accepted and should be accepted by every 
human being who is here in the place we call the United States, not 
just the North American continent but a place bounded by borders and a 
place that benefits from some of the greatest political thinking in the 
world, that created our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our 
Declaration of Independence, and the freedom that we enjoy and that 
millions around the world enjoy or envy.
  It is great to be an American. It is great to explore what 
possibilities there are out there for other human beings on this planet 
that want to actually begin to experience the idea of freedom. We can 
do this. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is everything, I think, to 
be proud of.
  I, Mr. Speaker, for one am immensely proud to be a tiny part of this 
great Nation and someone who springs from the heritage that we call 
Western.

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