[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11173-11175]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          A MATTER OF HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Russell). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I heard earlier discussions from my 
friends--and I literally mean that, friends; I am not being sarcastic, 
they are friends--talking about the shootings. It sounds like they were 
certainly racist shootings in South Carolina when an evil man shot 
brothers and sisters of mine as fellow Christians.
  Now there is this big race to go after the Confederate flag. So, Mr. 
Speaker, I saw this article by Daniel Greenfield and felt like this was 
worth noting, historically, information that Mr. Greenfield has 
published this month. Just touching on parts of the article--I started 
to say ``he,'' but it says ``Daniel.'' Maybe it is a man, maybe it 
isn't. I don't want to be biased based on a name.
  But anyway, in his article he says, talking about President Obama: 
``When Obama condemned Christianity for the Crusades, only a thousand 
years too late, in attendance was the Foreign Minister of Sudan, a 
country that practices slavery and genocide. President Obama could have 
taken time out from his rigorous denunciation of the Middle Ages to 
speak truth to the emissary of a Muslim Brotherhood regime whose leader 
is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against 
humanity, but our moral liberals spend too much time romanticizing 
actual slaver cultures.
  ``It's a lot easier for our President to get in his million-dollar 
Cadillac with 5-inch thick bulletproof windows, a ride Boss Hogg could 
only envy''--Boss Hogg being a reference to the name of the show 
``Dukes of Hazzard''--``and chase down a couple of good ole boys than 
it is to condemn a culture that committed genocide in our own time, not 
in 1099, and that keeps slaves today, not in 1815.
  ``Even while the Duke boys''--again, references to ``Dukes of 
Hazzard''--``the Duke boys were chased through Georgia, President Obama 
appeared at an Iftar dinner, an event at which Muslims emulate 
Mohammed, who had more slaves than Robert E. Lee. There are no slaves 
in Arlington House today, but in the heartlands of Islam, from Saudi 
mansions to ISIS dungeons, there are still slaves, laboring, beaten, 
bought, sold, raped, and disposed of in Mohammed's name.
  ``Slavery does not exist under the Confederate flag eagerly being 
pulled down. It does exist under the black and green flags of Islam 
rising over mosques in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and America today.
  ``In our incredibly tolerant culture, it has become politically 
incorrect to watch the General Lee''--talking about a car--``jump a 
fence or a barn, but paying tribute to the culture that sent the slaves 
here and that still practices slavery is the culturally sensitive thing 
to do. In 2015, slavery is no longer freedom, but it certainly is 
tolerance.''
  The article goes on: ``Slavery was an indigenous African and Middle 
Eastern practice, not to mention an indigenous practice in America 
among indigenous cultures.''
  The author here is talking about, for those who don't understand 
indigenous cultures, he is talking about Native Americans. There were 
Native Americans that had slaves, just like in Africa and Middle 
Eastern practices.
  The article goes on: ``If justice demands that we pull down the 
Confederate flag everywhere, even from the top of the orange car 
sailing through the air in the freeze frame of an old television show, 
then what possible justification is there for all the faux Aztec 
knickknacks? Even the worst Southern plantation owners didn't tear out 
the hearts of their slaves on top of pyramids.''
  This is a reference that obviously in history we understand Aztecs 
did pull out hearts of slaves that they sacrificed on top of pyramids.
  Anyway, the article says: ``The romanticization of Aztec brutality 
plays a crucial role in the mythology of Mexican nationalist groups 
like La Raza promoting the Reconquista of America today.''
  I wasn't aware of that, but the article says: ``Black nationalists 
romanticize the slave-holding civilization of Egypt despite the fact 
that the narrative of the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from bondage 
played a crucial role in the end of slavery in America. The endless 
stories about the `Amazons' of the African kingdom of Dahomey neatly 
fit into the leftist myth of a peaceful matriarchal Africa disrupted by 
European colonialism, but Dahomey ran on slavery.
  ``The `Amazons' helped capture slaves for the Atlantic slave trade. 
White and Black liberals are romanticizing the very culture that 
captured and sold their forefathers into slavery. `In Dahomey', the 
first major mainstream Black musical was about African Americans moving 
to Dahomey. By then, the French had taken over old Dahomey and together 
with the British had put an end to the slave trade.
  ``The French dismantled the `Amazons' and freed many of Dahomey's 
slaves only for the idiot descendants of both groups to romanticize the 
last noble stand of Dahomey fighting for the right to export Black 
slaves to Cuba and condemn the European liberators who put a stop to 
that atrocity.
  ``If we crack down on romanticizing Dixie, how can we possibly 
justify romanticizing Dahomey or the Aztecs or Mohammed?
  ``If slavery and racism are wrong,'' which clearly they are, the 
article says. ``If slavery and racism are wrong, then they are wrong 
across the board . . . Dahomey and Mohammed had bought, sold, and 
killed enough Black lives to be frowned upon.
  ``If we go back far enough in time, most cultures kept slaves. The 
Romans and Greeks certainly did. That's why the meaningful standard is 
not whether a culture ever had slaves, but whether it has slaves today. 
If we are going to eradicate the symbols of every culture that ever 
traded in slaves, there will be few cultural symbols that will escape 
unscathed. But the academics who insist on cultural relativism in 19th 
century Africa reject it in 19th century South Carolina, thereby 
revealing their own racism.
  ``And so instead of fighting actual modern-day slavery in Africa and 
the Middle East, social justice warriors are swarming to invade Hazzard 
County.
  ``Most of the cultures of the past that we admire, respect, and even 
romanticize had slaves, but when we look back at their achievements and 
even try to forge some connection to them, it does not have to mean an 
endorsement of their worst habits. This is a concept that liberals 
understood but that leftists reject.
  ``The recent hysteria reminds us that the nuanced reason of the 
former has been replaced by the irrational, destructive impulses of the 
latter. The left is so obsessed with creating utopias of the future 
that, like the Taliban or ISIS, it destroys the relics of past 
societies that do not measure up to its impossible standards. And then 
it replaces them with imaginary utopias of the past that never existed.

[[Page 11174]]

  ``As Ben Carson pointed out, we will not get rid of racism by banning 
the Confederate flag. Even when it is used at its worst by the likes of 
Dylann Storm Roof, it is a symptom, not the problem. Roof was not 
radicalized by the dead Confederacy, but by the racial tensions kicked 
off''--I am not sure I want to say that.
  But, anyway, interesting take, but all of this talk about eliminating 
any references or uses of things that remind us of the horrors, the 
abomination that slavery was in the United States should be eliminated. 
That is what we are hearing.
  And so, Mr. Speaker, in thinking about that--and the suggestion was 
made by my friend, another judge from Texas, Judge Carter, so I had to 
go look it up. I think there is an entity that was so evil in 
supporting slavery, in fighting against civil rights, in fighting 
against the Christian brother that Martin Luther King, Jr., was, 
fighting against those who wanted equality that the Constitution 
guaranteed, we ought to look at those symbols, and we ought to look at 
what they stood for and perhaps ban any political organization from 
participating in Congress for upholding the abomination that slavery 
was to this country.
  So I was able to get a copy of this platform, this political platform 
from 1856. This is the number one plank in the platform of this hideous 
political organization, and this is what they believed and they 
asserted.

                              {time}  2045

  I am reading from the number one plank in their party platform: 
``That Congress has no power under the Constitution, to interfere with 
or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that 
such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining 
to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution''--then, here 
it goes--``that all efforts of the abolitionists, or others, made to 
induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take 
incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most 
alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an 
inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and 
endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be 
countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.''
  That was the official number one plank in this hideous political 
organization's platform from 1856.
  They go on. Here is number three: ``That by the uniform application 
of this Democratic principle to the organization of territories, and to 
the admission of new States, with or without domestic slavery, as they 
may elect--the equal rights, of all the States will be preserved 
intact.''
  They are saying they want to preserve slavery in any State that wants 
to have it.
  They finish up by saying: ``Resolved, That we recognize the right of 
the people of all the Territories, including Kansas and Nebraska, 
acting through the legally and fairly expressed will of a majority of 
actual residents, and whenever the number of their inhabitants 
justifies it, to form a constitution, with or without domestic 
slavery.''
  It sounds like something the Ku Klux Klan would have done. They are 
demanding that they have the right to have slavery, the worst 
abomination in the history of America, that even Thomas Jefferson put 
in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence that it was a 
horrible grievance against the King of England for allowing slavery, 
this horrible abomination, from ever starting in America.
  Well, they didn't learn their lesson. This hideous political 
organization's platform in 1860 said they were adopting all the things 
that they had said in 1856 about the right to keep this heinous, 
offensive slavery intact.
  They include this, though, additionally in their platform of 1860: 
``Resolved, That the enactment of the State Legislatures to defeat the 
faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, 
subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.''
  They want to make it clear that not only were they avid supporters of 
slavery in America, but that it was their right to own people in 
America. This disgusting political organization also found the fugitive 
slave law to be, as they say, hostile in character, subversive of the 
Constitution.
  Again, this sounds like something from the Ku Klux Klan. Will we want 
the Ku Klux Klan participating here on the floor when this is their 
history? It is the worst abomination.
  The horrors of slavery finally were overcome, largely by abolitionist 
churches and pastors, people who believed that it had to stop, that 
people couldn't be treating brothers and sisters in such a way.
  It took the life work and even laying down of the life of Martin 
Luther King, Jr., to push us to the level where brothers and sisters, 
as he was in Christ, could treat brothers and sisters as equal people. 
That is where we should have been all along. It is where he was pushing 
us to be against the hideous type things from 1856 and 1860.
  If we are going to eliminate everything that reminds us of a hideous 
past that supported slavery and the oppression, the horrors that 
slavery entailed--breaking up of families, molestations, the beatings, 
just the horrors--John Quincy Adams was right. God could not continue 
to bless America while we were treating brothers and sisters by putting 
them in chains and bondage.
  He was right. So many abolitionists were right. Daniel Webster was 
right. Republicans that stood up to these hideous political 
organizations were right. There should be no place for slavery in 
America.
  If we are going to have a complete cleansing of this country of 
anything, any symbol, then this platform from the Democratic Party in 
1856 and 1860--and it wasn't the Ku Klux Klan; it sounded like it, and 
there were a lot of Democrats who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. I 
don't know that you can find Republicans that were members of the Ku 
Klux Klan, but there were certainly plenty of Democrats that were.
  I think it is time not for the Washington Redskins to change their 
name, but for the Democratic Party to change its name because all you 
have to do is go online and look up the history of the Democratic 
Party. It is one of oppressing African Americans. It is one of 
supporting slavery and the horrors that occurred in the United States, 
even up through the 20th century on into the 1860s.
  I think we had a Democratic Senator who was a member of the Ku Klux 
Klan. I think he has got a lot of things named after him. I hope that 
my friends who will ultimately want to change the name of the 
Democratic Party because of its horrible history will also want to 
change the names of things that were named after somebody that was a 
big supporter of the Ku Klux Klan.
  The fact is the families of the victims in Charleston, South 
Carolina--brothers and sisters in Christ, for those of us who are 
Christians--wow, did they send a powerful message. I didn't see or hear 
them demanding the Confederate flag be taken down. I heard them forgive 
the one--the evil, horrible person--that committed such a vile act on 
people at a prayer meeting, of all things.
  They showed the kind of love Jesus showed, the kind of love that was 
embodied by Father Damien, whose statue is right down at the southern 
entrance of this building beneath us right now. The plaque on his 
statue--God forgive anybody who would ever want to change this, because 
it is so powerful--are the words of Jesus in John 15:13: ``Greater love 
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.''
  Jesus did that; Father Damien did that; Martin Luther King, Jr., did 
that--many have so that we could have the freedoms we have today, many 
of our American military forces have, not just for your freedom, but 
freedom around the world.
  Let's recognize the good with which we have been blessed. Let's stop 
the name calling, the race baiting, the division politics. Let's fuss 
and disagree over issues, but let's quit trying to tear this country 
apart because of things of the past in which not one person in this 
room would have taken part in.

[[Page 11175]]

  Let's work together. Fuss, disagree, push for what we believe is best 
for the country, but let's stop the race baiting because, if we are 
really going to go there, we have got to end the Democratic Party. Its 
history is so interwoven with starting, keeping, trying to push slavery 
on beyond anything that it should have been through.
  We don't need to end the Democratic Party. We just need to work 
together in the present. That doesn't mean we can't disagree. We do all 
the time. Let's stop the race baiting. Let's look at the example of the 
victims' families in Charleston, South Carolina, and say: Wow, there 
are incredible believers and followers of Jesus Christ. That is 
somebody we can emulate.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________