[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2179]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    COMPETING VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, our Nation has come to a crossroads 
between two competing visions for the future that don't easily 
reconcile. At such times as these, emotions run very high.
  The good news is that our institutions are the best ever designed to 
resolve such political disputes. And it comes down to this: In other 
countries, the government is the sovereign and rights flow from it to 
the people; here in America, the people are sovereign.
  In America, the sovereign does not govern; it hires help to govern 
during an election. In between elections, the sovereign people debate 
how the hired help is doing. That is the real debate, the one that goes 
on every day over backyard fences and family dinner tables wherever 
Americans gather. After that family discussion, we decide whether to 
fire the hired help or keep it for another cycle. As long as we are 
with each other and not shouting at each other, our system works very 
well.
  Once in our history, we stopped talking with each other. That was the 
election of 1860. That election was marked not by reconciliation, but 
by rioting in those regions where the opposition dominated. The 
opposition party refused to accept the legitimacy of the election 
itself. Political leaders pledged resistance to the new administration 
by any means necessary. They asserted the doctrine of nullification, 
the notion that any dissenting State or city that opposed Federal laws 
could simply refuse to obey them. Finally came the secession movement, 
the ultimate rejection of our Constitution and our rule of law.
  Have we not started down that road once again?
  Even before the election, we saw violent mobs carrying foreign flags 
physically attack Americans for the sole reason that they wanted to 
attend a political rally for the candidate of their choice. The 
violence in Berkeley last week warns us that this behavior is rising.
  Some prominent elected officials are again asserting the doctrine of 
nullification by declaring that their jurisdictions are sanctuaries 
where Federal immigration laws will simply be ignored. In California, 
the formal cessation movement is supported by nearly a third of the 
population of my own suffering State.
  Now, I held more than a hundred townhall meetings in my district 
throughout the last 8 years, spanning the entire life of the Tea Party 
and the Occupy Wall Street movements. Through all of these heated 
debates, the police have never had to intervene, until this weekend in 
Roseville, when the Roseville Police Department determined that the 
size and temper of the crowd required a police escort to protect me as 
I left the venue.

                              {time}  1030

  Now, the vast majority of the people attempting to attend this 
meeting were peaceful, decent, law-abiding folks who sincerely opposed 
Donald Trump, and they wanted to make their views known to their 
elected representative. But, there was also a well-organized element 
that came to disrupt, and disrupt they did.
  Now, in the last four elections, our country has turned dramatically 
away from the left. The Democrats have lost 67 House seats, 12 Senate 
seats, 10 Governors, more than 900 State legislative seats, and now the 
Presidency. That happened, in large part, because those who opposed 
their policies talked with their neighbors about the future of our 
country.
  Instead of pursuing that successful example, the radical left seeks 
not to persuade their fellow citizens by reason but rather to impose 
its views by bullying, insulting, intimidating, and, as in Berkeley, by 
physically attacking their fellow citizens. This is not a tactic likely 
to change minds, but, if it persists, it could tear down the very 
institutions of democracy that have served us so well for so long.
  I would ask the many sincere citizens who have been caught up with 
this disruptive element: Do you object because the President is 
breaking his promises, or do you object because he is keeping them?
  If your objection is because the President is keeping the promises he 
made to the American people, is that not because the sovereign people, 
your neighbors and fellow countrymen, directed these changes over the 
last four elections?
  If you love our country, and that love for our country is greater 
than your hatred of our President, I implore you to engage in a civil 
discussion with your fellow citizens. That is what true democracy looks 
like.

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