[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20253-20254]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   BILL OF RIGHTS' 220TH ANNIVERSARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Broun) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, today I rise to commemorate the 
220th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights to our U.S. 
Constitution. Some of our most basic freedoms and governing principles 
are laid out in this precious document. The amendments listed were 
meant to protect our individual liberties and our private property. 
They serve as a constant reminder that our Nation was meant for its 
citizens to have liberty, with very little government intrusion into 
their lives.
  Today's modern government has, sadly, strayed very far away from the 
vision that our Founding Fathers had when they ratified the Bill of 
Rights. It seems like every day we lose a little bit more of our 
freedom to the ideals of Big Government and to the standards of 
socialism.
  In Hosea 4:6, God says, ``My people are destroyed from a lack of 
knowledge.''
  We have a tremendous lack of knowledge in this Nation about the 
principles that our Founding Fathers gave us in the U.S. Constitution 
and the Bill of Rights, and we are being destroyed because those 
foundational principles are being eroded day by day here in Congress, 
by Presidents, and by the Federal court system.
  Please read the U.S. Constitution. Read the Bill of Rights. Teach 
them to our children and to our grandchildren so that we can come 
together and demand a constitutionally limited government, as our 
Founding Fathers intended. We need to begin to rebuild the principles 
that have made this Nation the greatest in history, the greatest 
political experiment in the history of mankind. Those principles are 
what have made this country so great, so powerful, and so successful; 
and the only way that we will retain that is if we become knowledgeable 
and start demanding a constitutionally limited

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government, as our Founding Fathers meant it.
  So please read the Constitution. Please read the Bill of Rights. Read 
what our Founding Fathers said about it. Demand that kind of governance 
from our elected representatives all across this country, at all levels 
of government. Our freedom and liberty depend upon it.
  Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.

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