[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 26751-26752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON PRESERVING OUR FREEDOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, in the ongoing debate over health care 
reform, the topic of freedom is often overlooked, but it ought not be. 
The Democrats' health care bill is a massive expansion of government 
that will alter the lives and livelihoods of every person in America. 
For many, that means higher taxes; and for even more, it will mean an 
unprecedented intrusion of Federal Government bureaucrats into the way 
we receive health care. This is a fundamental erosion of our freedom.
  The great freedom fighter, Abraham Lincoln, gave a speech in 
Springfield, Illinois, in 1838 where he touched on the idea of the loss 
of freedom. He was very explicit. He explained that our country could 
one day suffer a loss of freedom, not by an outside attack but from 
within. I will quote what Lincoln said and then give it in its larger 
context:
  ``At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I 
answer: If it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot 
come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its 
author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all 
time or die by suicide.''
  The larger context of those words is as follows:
  ``In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the 
American people, find our account running, under date of the 19th 
century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful 
possession of the fairest portion of the Earth as regards extent of 
territory, fertility of soil and salubrity of climate. We find 
ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, 
conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty 
than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when 
mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors 
of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or 
establishment of them. They are a legacy bequeathed us by a once hardy, 
brave and patriotic but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. 
Theirs was the task, and nobly they performed it, to possess themselves 
and, through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon 
its hills and its valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal 
rights; 'tis ours only to transmit these--the former, unprofaned--by 
the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and 
untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit 
the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to 
ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general all 
imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
  ``How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the 
approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we 
expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us 
at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, 
with all the treasure of the Earth, our own excepted, in their military 
chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a 
drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a 
thousand years.
  ``At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I 
answer: If it

[[Page 26752]]

ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from 
abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and 
finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die 
by suicide.''

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