The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ISSUES OF THE DAY” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the in the House section section on pages H6945-H6950 on July 21.
The Department is primarily focused on food nutrition, with assistance programs making up 80 percent of its budget. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department implements too many regulations and restrictions and impedes the economy.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Torres of New York). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor and a privilege to have a chance to address the House. There is so much that is so critically important going on these days, especially this week, and I wanted the chance to address those.
I have a friend from Texas who hopes to address the House, and I advised him I would yield him such time as he may consume. So my friend--people say that a lot, ``my friend.'' But Randy Weber is a dear friend, and I think he will be out at any moment.
In the meantime, I think we had an 11- to 12-hour hearing yesterday in the Committee on the Judiciary, and I will get into that momentarily.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Weber), my dear friend from southeast Texas.
Mr. WEBER of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank Judge Gohmert for yielding, my friend from northeast Texas. We are going to miss him. He has had quite a distinguished career both before he got into Congress and then when he got demoted to Congress. We appreciate him. I just can't tell you how much we really appreciate him.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of country music legend Mickey Gilley. Mickey Gilley passed away Saturday, May 7, in Branson at the age of 86.
Born on March 9, 1936, Gilley was a native of Natchez, Mississippi, where he grew up around his two famous cousins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart.
In his career, Gilley earned 39 top 10 hits and 17 number one songs.
With six Academy of Country Music Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and as a member of the 2011 Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, Gilley was also one of only a few artists who have also received the Academy of Country Music's Triple Crown Award.
But it was the opening of the country dance club bearing his name that changed the world of country music forever. It was 1971 when Mickey officially opened the doors of his famous honkytonk.
Gilley's reputation grew so much that Hollywood even took notice of the hit movie ``Urban Cowboy,'' where he even made an appearance alongside none other than John Travolta, Debra Winger, and Johnny Lee.
Inspired by the real-life romance of a pair of the club's patrons,
``Urban Cowboy'' put Gilley's on the map, revived music careers, launched others, introduced two-stepping to a whole new audience, and created a lifestyle that has been adopted by millions.
Following his role in ``Urban Cowboy,'' Gilley found himself performing in main showrooms in places like Las Vegas, Reno, Tahoe, and Atlantic City, and even traveling to Europe to perform. Gilley even performed for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Over the decades, Gilley appeared in a number of popular television series, including ``The Fall Guy,'' ``Fantasy Island,'' ``The Dukes of Hazzard,'' ``Murder, She Wrote,'' and ``CHiPs.''
Not only will Mickey Gilley's music live on in the hearts of so many who loved his music, but his cultural influence cannot be overstated.
``Urban Cowboy'' became an American phenomenon, and it was influenced by the real-life stories of Gilley's patrons, Dew Westbrook and Betty Helmer.
``Urban Cowboy'' told the story of a west Texas farmhand who was new to the area and working his first job at a refinery. This film introduced country dance to America and created a lifestyle that has been adopted by millions.
Even more surprisingly, it directly resulted in the most unlikely outcome of all: Country-and-western music became mainstream. Once considered outdated hillbilly attire, cowboy hats and belt buckles became high fashion.
On Saturday, January 29, Mickey came to the Galveston Regional Chamber of Commerce's celebration, ``The 50th Anniversary of Gilley's and the 42nd Anniversary of `Urban Cowboy.''' It was a great celebration with thousands, and Mickey actually sang for us, to the delight of the crowd. We even presented him with a copy of the tribute that I had done to him right here on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and a plaque commemorating that event.
Mickey Gilley will be missed, but his legacy will live on not only in the hearts and minds of those who loved his music but also in America's love of country-and-western music, Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, and, yes, pickup trucks. He has even been featured in the very popular Texas Hot Country Magazine. I know the publisher well, Leon Beck, a great guy.
Gilley was preceded in his death by his wife Vivian, who passed in 2019. He is survived by his wife now, Cindy Loeb Gilley; his children, Kathy, Michael, Gregory, and Keith Ray; his four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren; and his cousins, Jerry Lee Lewis and, I believe, Jimmy Swaggart, although someone told me recently he might have passed already. My deepest sympathies go out to his family.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Mickey Gilley for introducing our way of life to the world. He will forever be a legend.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend bringing that to our attention. That was a great tribute to a great man from a great man.
I did attend and help things out at Gilley's on a number of occasions there in Pasadena--Pasadena, Texas, that is--not far from downtown Houston.
I don't know. I guess I had the look that I could ride a bull because they turned it up as high as it could go wheeling, and it was something. I got better at it, but that was tough when they put that thing on full speed, yanking back and forth. I just knew I wasn't going to ride a bull in the rodeo.
Rather prophetic, too, was Mickey Gilley with one of his biggest hit songs, ``Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time.'' Quite an astute observation. But we were young then.
It was interesting, hearing the colloquy exchange between Representative Scalise and Leader Hoyer, the discussion about inflation.
I remember vividly the years under President Gerald Ford, and he adopted WIN and had WIN buttons, which stood for ``Whip Inflation Now.'' The failure of the policies at that point to whip inflation, along with Watergate, helped elect President Jimmy Carter, and things just got worse and worse. We lost our international standing. Countries did not respect us.
Beginning in 1978, I was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. As I have said before, we weren't in combat during my 4 years on Active Duty, but I still have deep regrets that President Carter did not respond more appropriately when an act of war occurred in Iran, in Tehran, when our Embassy was attacked and over 50 employees taken prisoner.
We were put on alert. That went up at Fort Benning, and people weren't sure who all was going to be going if a group was sent.
{time} 1245
But I still believe, having lived through those days, watching every development, that if President Carter had made clear to the Iranians, you will either release--initially, I think they started out around three days. The spokesman for the Ayatollah kept saying the students attacked the embassy, the students took the hostages.
I mean, I was young, but I wasn't stupid. And it appeared pretty clear to me that the spokesman for the Ayatollah was giving himself a back door: The students did this. That way, if President Carter reacted, as he should have, and said you will either release those hostages, get them released from the students, play around with the ridiculous thing that we are saying, if you don't get those released within 48 to 72 hours, something like that, then we are sending as many people as it takes to get our people back, and to stop the active war you started.
But if it is the students, you can just take care of that quite easily. But, again, if you don't release them, see that they are released, we are coming. And if you harm one hair on their heads, then we are going to take everyone associated with the Ayatollah Khomeini, including the Ayatollah Khomeini, out. They will not exist after we come.
I really felt if President Carter had taken that strong position, they would have been released. He couldn't bluff; he had to be serious about it. But if he had said he wasn't bluffing, then I really felt like they would have been released. And nobody was dying to go to Iran at Fort Benning, but everybody I knew was willing to go and give up their lives, if necessary. That was part of being in the service.
But that never happened. And it took getting a new President, Ronald Reagan, in office, before people around the world began to take the United States seriously. But some in this body have talked before about, Oh, no, we don't want to give the radical Islamists something to recruit with.
Well, one of the best things they ever had to recruit with was President Carter and his unwillingness to take a stand and make a difference. And as a result, it is my belief that--having studied history my whole life, majored in it in college, never stopped studying it--that we lost thousands of American lives because we didn't have a President in President Carter that engendered respect. And respect carries a little element of fear. We didn't have that. And as a result, for decades, Americans have suffered.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Miller), my friend.
Democrats' Leftwing Agenda
Mrs. MILLER of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
In just one week, House Democrats have managed to bypass the wishes of the American people and pass radical legislation that permits abortion through the ninth month, assures payouts to Planned Parenthood, attacks the traditional family, and eliminates medical supervision for chemical abortion pills.
The American people who overwhelmingly oppose abortion through the third trimester are appalled by the radical leftwing agenda put forth by the Speaker. House Democrats are pushing an extreme leftwing agenda. They are trying to distract from the surging gas prices, record inflation, and the crisis at the border, which they created.
It took less than 2 years for woke leftists to destroy the American economy, which was booming under President Trump's leadership. These same leftists have also openly advocated for open borders, transgender surgeries on teens, and removing the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.
All of these initiatives are deeply unpopular with the American people, and I will also vote ``no'' on the radical agenda of the left.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, when Mary Miller tells you something, you can count on her being truthful about it.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we had many hours of hearings in the Judiciary Committee on a couple of bills. One of them, the Democrat majority and leaders in the Judiciary Committee and the Democratic Party were saying repeatedly that no one has gotten immunity from liability like the gun manufacturers. And that was said many ways, many different times, vilifying gun manufacturers.
What it boils down to is in the Second Amendment, it makes very clear, in operative part, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Well, it has been infringed many times. The Supreme Court has had to strike things down many times. So the effort to eliminate the Second Amendment through the courts has not occurred.
You can be smart and not have commonsense, but we are dealing with some smart people here who have figured out, Okay, we have tried every which way to get rid of the Second Amendment. If we are ever going to get to the progressive, socialist, communist dream--whichever one of those you want to use, it is all pretty well the same thing these days--you are going to have to get rid of the Second Amendment.
The left knows that. And they have made some strides. They have made some dents into the Second Amendment. But this is going to make use--if they get it passed into law--not of warfare but of what has come to be known as ``law fare.'' It is where you overwhelm someone or some entity with so many lawsuits that they cannot continue. And if it is an entity, you put them out of business, not because they are liable, but it is because they can't handle that many lawsuits. It just undoes them and puts them out of business.
And if you look historically where that would take us is to the medieval-type thinking where you had this small group of elites. They rode everywhere they went, and us peasants would walk everywhere we went. Maybe there was a big wagon that would carry the peasants at times. But the ruling elite--which is what you get with socialism, progressivism--this tiny veneer of ruling elite that billionaires in America think, mistakenly, that they will be part of if they help get to that socialist utopia, being ignorant of the fact that every time a Nation moves to socialist utopia, once they are there, they thank the gazillionaires for all the money. They helped make the socialist dream come true. And then they either kill them or send them to a gulag and take all of their money.
So these billionaires that are pouring in money, the socialist leaders are saying, Thank you very much; oh, we appreciate you so much. But if they get to that socialist utopia, those billionaires that made it possible will be dead, or wished they were, because they were in some prison, some gulag somewhere, doing work requirements. So that is historically what we are talking about.
But I keep coming back to that vision of what is being pursued and what will the outcome be. Once you either eliminate the Second Amendment or you eliminate every entity that makes guns, then the ruling elite can get closer to their dreams of being the ones riding in private jets, in Suburbans, up-armored; being the only ones in America who have guns for their security forces while all the peasants, the masses, the unwashed--all of us--would have nothing. And we would have to kowtow and bow.
Now, I got a little taste of that the summer I was in the Soviet Union as an exchange student back in the 1970s. And I thought it was crazy. We were told there were eight Americans allowed in on this program. We were told in orientation, Look, you have got to understand in a communist society like the Soviet Union, only the elite have cars. Everybody else takes mass transportation or walks.
In the United States, pedestrians generally have the right-of-way. But don't think for a second we were told anywhere in the Soviet Union that you have the right-of-way of a pedestrian, because only the ruling elite have the cars. And it is a game to them. They will try to hit you because they know, as the ruling elite, if it ever came to court or there was some question about you as a pedestrian being hit, the ultimate result would be a ruling that you should have seen the car coming and gotten out of the way. Because these are the ruling elites and you are the peasants. Great socialist utopia. That is where we are headed if these kinds of bills get passed.
If you can't get rid of the Second Amendment, their strategy that we lived through hours of yesterday, bankrupt the gun manufacturers. And then we will be on our way. And that way, only the ruling elite will have security forces with guns and everybody else will either walk or take mass transportation. The ruling elite gets the private jets.
And it is okay to just have massive amounts of carbon emissions and private helicopters, private jets, big Suburbans, like Al Gore used. I read where he was seen having an entourage of big jets--this was long after he was out of leadership as Vice President--but they would all be sitting there, cooling for the Vice President--or former Vice President. So that is the kind of thing that will continue.
The ruling elite, they get to pollute like crazy. Their yachts, their private jets, those will continue. In fact, there will be a lot more of them. And you see people like the Biden family--Hunter Biden that got close to oligarchs in Russia, in Ukraine--and made money off the Chinese Communist Party because they were in charge in China, let's face it.
But isn't it interesting that if you look at the policies and the things that this administration has done, who has benefited?
Yeah, they talk a lot of trash about Russia but at the same time, by President Biden basically going to war with energy companies in the U.S., he has so driven up the price of oil and natural gas that Russia's been able to fund their invasion of, and war with, Ukraine.
{time} 1300
We got $13 billion passed in this House. Another $40 billion. I voted for 13; I didn't vote for the 40 because it didn't appear to me there was enough restraint on what President Biden could do with the money.
It made big headlines in the last few weeks when the Biden administration announced: Gee, we are going to provide $820 million to Ukraine. Well, you have $53 billion to work with and you are trickling out $820 million while Russia is making big advances in Ukraine? For heaven's sake, that is one of the reasons I didn't vote for the $40 billion because I figured that the Biden administration would find other things to do with it.
Apparently, they want to have a lot more sex change surgeries in the military. They cost a lot of money--it doesn't cost $40 billion if you had a sex change for everybody in the military. By the way, that does put our military members in a category where they are not able to be utilized for military services. Last I saw, they stayed in that category where you couldn't deploy them until such time as a psychiatrist could certify that they were comfortable in their new gender. Amazing. No wonder we are losing respect around the world when we are not spending defense money on defense, we are spending it on social experimentation.
We see these bills coming. We see what is happening. All you have to do is look from a historical perspective. The discussion about gasoline is actually cheaper now than it was at the end of the Bush administration. My gosh, we just went through TARP being passed, $700 billion--well, yeah, that is going to cause some inflation.
Along came the Obama administration--the Obama-Biden administration--
and they got another $900 billion on top of having a majority of the
$700 billion still to spend. They were throwing money at things right and left that would help them get reelected. So I wouldn't be bragging about a whole lot.
In fact, I have seen an article indicating that during the 8 years of the Obama-Biden administration, the average Black household in America during the Obama-Biden 8 years, the average Black household lost 30 percent of their net worth, which really helped bring a great deal of light and emphasis on candidate Donald Trump's question to a large Black audience:
What do you got to lose by voting for me?
What do you got to lose?
You just lost 30 percent of your net worth under the Democrats. Lo and behold, the average gained net worth under the 4 years of President Trump.
So people, I think, are starting to look at those kind of numbers again, and I think it is important to do so.
Back to our hearing yesterday. They kept saying that gun manufacturers were given immunity like nobody else in America. It was my honor to get to illuminate that issue for those that hadn't thought through what they were saying and didn't realize that it was not true.
First of all, a very timely topic that many of us think has long outlived its usefulness is the massive immunity that has been given to the pharmaceutical industry for the vaccinations that they have made tens of billions of dollars just in a year--they have made so much money off those.
So much so that they looked around--most people have gotten the vaccination. I hate to see somebody have natural immunity from having COVID because they are not as vulnerable to getting COVID again as apparently people are that have had the vaccinations and all the boosters.
So what do you do?
Oh, let's go after the young people under 5 years of age. These are people that statistically, you would say, don't even have a statistical chance of getting COVID and passing away. They were the least vulnerable among us when it comes to COVID--and that is who they want to give a jab to and boosters--even though we are seeing more and more indications that immunity ends up being compromised in many people who get the boosters. It doesn't seem to help with immunity to new strains of COVID.
The Democrats were more than thrilled, it seems, to give them all kinds of immunity. When I saw the huge, unfolded warnings that come with the vaccination, I said to the pharmacist: Where are all the warnings?
They know about a lot of things that go wrong with these. We know about it from the VAERS reports of so many things that have gone wrong, starting with blood clots and going from there.
He said: No. It says up there because it is emergency use authorization, not only do they have complete immunity to any lawsuit for damages or deaths they cause, they don't even have to warn you of all the damages that they know can result from the vaccinations or the boosters. They don't even have to warn you.
My friends in the Judiciary Committee yesterday--because they kept saying, you know, nobody else gets this kind of immunity, they just weren't aware--I know the rules, we are here in the House of Representatives, you can't intentionally lie to anybody. That is why I am sure they just forgot or weren't aware of all the immunities that they provided to other entities--the pharmaceutical.
They don't even have to warn you or give you a heads-up of what is coming potentially with the vaccination or booster. Then you got social media. Section 230 has allowed some of the richest companies in the world and individuals in the world to completely escape liability. They should be made to answer in court for fraud and for so many of the things that they have done--for censorship, for taking away people's rights that they were told they had under the social media.
Anyway, even though I know that my Democrat friends were not talking about section 230 immunity--there it is. Of course, they don't want to bother that because that allows all the Democrats controlling these massive social media giants to censor and help at election time and help Democrats get elected.
They want to leave that immunity in place when it needs to go. We need to just eliminate section 230. We were told, well, that was important to have to allow them to get started. Listen, they are started, and they are some of the most powerful companies in the history of the world--some would say more powerful than the U.S. Government itself because of all the information they have. It is time to get rid of their immunity from liability. Even fraud--you can't even sue them for fraud.
Diamond and Silk, they were telling me how they had paid in order to have their name come up more often. Not only did it not come up more often, an algorithm was used to send it to the bottom. That is called fraud. They took money from them under fraudulent circumstances. They can't even sue over that.
I am for getting rid of that immunity. I know that people knew, so they must have just forgotten. Members of Congress have immunity from being sued. You can come down here, you can accuse President Trump of all kinds of crimes--colluding with Russia, when it turned out that was not Trump, that was the Hillary Clinton campaign that was doing the colluding with Russia.
You can accuse him of all kinds of crimes. You can call Trump guilty of all kinds of thing, and you can't be sued for it--for things you say and do here in the House. We have got that immunity.
Heck, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris got the same kind of immunity. Even though we have lost more than 100,000 Americans in 1 year from fentanyl and drugs that have come across our southern border illegally, if they didn't have the immunity that my Democrat friends in the Judiciary Committee said doesn't exist, then they could be sued for their negligence or intentional failures.
They both took an oath to uphold the Constitution. So allowing a completely porous border--that is not upholding their oath. Over 100,000 people have died just from the illegal drugs that have been allowed in by this administration.
If not for the immunity, President Biden could be vulnerable to lawsuit. Even with all the money that Hunter has helped bring in, it wouldn't be enough to pay all the judgments if it weren't for the immunity. Maybe somebody might--if they were not immune--somebody might try to allege that it was negligence and purely stupid to put someone in charge as border czar who would never go to the border to even investigate and see at the border what was going on. That would make her vulnerable to liability as well, except for the immunity.
Those are rather important ideas to remember. Republicans didn't give gun manufacturers some kind of exclusive immunity. They are liable. If they are negligent--they even have strict liability. If there is a defect in manufacturing or design, they are liable. In one case, they paid out millions of dollars because they had advertised and targeted a specific audience they shouldn't have.
{time} 1315
They clearly have liability. That was just a lot of information that was not accurate that was being tossed out yesterday as a reason to get rid of all guns except, of course, mark my words, if they were ever successful in doing that, that little veneer of ruling elite, their security would have the guns, and we the peasants would have no guns and no way to defend ourselves.
Of course, we are seeing the abuses of law enforcement. We have had hearings on that before, massive abuse by law enforcement. With the bill yesterday, they were providing an exemption from getting rid of guns to bureaucrats in the Department of Agriculture and in the Department of Education. Bureaucrats, these weren't even the police force, were going to be exempt from the new laws the Democrats in the Judiciary Committee wanted to get passed.
We said: Wait, it is probably just an oversight because you have given an exemption for law enforcement, but you have no exemption for military or veterans.
The chairman of the committee--a Democrat chairman--said basically that, well, you have to keep in mind that they get PTSD, and they have all kinds of problems. We don't want to give that kind of exemption to carry guns to people who have been trained with them and who serve or have served in the military.
This is just a real slap in the face to people who put their lives on the line defending our country.
Do you want to dismiss them? Well, they have PTSD. They have all kinds of problems.
It is a shame that those people who are the reason that we are allowed to be here and talk, they put their lives on the line for us and our freedoms, and then they just get dismissed.
Bureaucrats in the Department of Education, who may not have ever been trained with weapons, are more important to give exemptions to than these current military or veterans. That is a mentality that is hard to understand.
We look at Indiana, at the shooting in the shopping mall. It is incredible that a person with the right to carry, within 15 seconds, the guy coming out into the mall with an automatic weapon, and this guy, as I understand, at 40 yards and with a handgun--I mean, I had to qualify every year with a handgun and with an M-16--at 40 yards put 8 out of 10 rounds in the shooter. That is incredible. But it sure did end the horror at the mall.
If other shooters find out that they could have 8 out of 10 rounds put into them if they walk out and try to do that at malls, it would help stop a lot of people from being tempted to do something that criminally evil in other shopping malls. It is just incredible.
We had this issue come up. I have page after page, over 50 pages, of recent history where people with right to carry have stepped up and saved so many lives because they were a law-abiding person, a selfless, law-abiding person willing to put their life at risk to save others. There is case after case, more than 50 in these documents.
It starts with information from criminal research, July 11, 2022, and it goes on and on. Like I say, I know there are more than 50 pages. These are heroes stepping up and putting their lives at risk knowing at Uvalde they had hundreds of law enforcement there.
I still don't understand that. They could hear the guy shooting children. You had a police chief while he is shooting children just asking him sweetly to put the gun down. The door wasn't locked. They could have gone in and taken him out at any moment.
I know hundreds of law enforcement as a former judge and former assistant district attorney, and I don't know any who would have stood by while children were being killed. It turns out there were people in Uvalde who were stopped--some law enforcement--who couldn't go in and do anything.
If a concealed carry, somebody with a constitutional carry, had been allowed to risk their life and go in, they would have. But people were being stopped and kept from going in. I recall an incident at our courthouse in Tyler and seeing the film when shots started being fired and the law enforcement starts running to the sound of the guns.
I had one incident at the courthouse. As is often the case, it was a domestic situation, and a shooter started shooting. We had a concealed carry permit holder who took his gun. The active shooter would have killed a lot more people, but the concealed carry permit holder started shooting at him. He got shot and died from his wounds. The guy had to take off. There is no telling how many lives were saved by that sacrificial person being willing to put himself out there in harm's way, become a target himself, and stop the shooter.
Law-abiding people have made a difference that way.
We had a lady who took her gun out years ago and went into a cafeteria to eat in central Texas. A gunman ended up shooting her parents, among others. If she had been allowed to have her gun, she would have stopped him. Then, she led the charge in the State legislature to get concealed carry permits, and that was the basis of the start there.
Mr. Speaker, you have to have people who have been taught that there are some absolute rights and some absolute wrongs. C.S. Lewis became a Christian from being, he would say, agnostic--seemed like sometimes atheist. But he liked to cajole Christians: Yes, yes, isn't easier just to admit there can't be a just God with so much injustice?
It finally dawned on him, the brilliant Oxford professor that he was, how could he say that there was injustice if there were not some absolute, universal standard somewhere of right and wrong? If that existed, then there must be something like a God who put that in place.
The more he wrestled with that, the more he came to understand that we all have innate in us this feeling of fairness and of justice. As he pointed out, it would be like someone born blind at birth trying to describe sight. How would you know that there is light or no light, Mr. Speaker, if there weren't something universal in it?
It is the same with injustice. He realized that when there is injustice, we would know it, and we couldn't know it if there wasn't an absolute, universal justice and injustice. Then that eventually led him to further inquiries and further research, and he became a Christian.
Well, Mr. Speaker, there is justice; there is injustice; and there are gray areas we argue about. But as John Adams said--and I will say it often because it was such a brilliant quote from one of the Founders who was there for the constitutional debate. He said: ``Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.''
If we are not going to teach children that thou shalt not murder, then we can't have a Second Amendment right. We must teach children that these things, these commandments, are universal, that you are not to lie and you are not to envy other people, and that there are things that are just not healthy for you and not healthy for society and for the culture, and they are universal. They are not healthy, and they are not good.
Honor your father and mother. Of course, fathers and mothers are supposed to be fair with their children. But if we are not going to teach that, if we are just going to teach that everything is relative, that it depends on your circumstances, that it may be right for you and wrong for somebody else, right for them and wrong for you, no, it is all relative.
If we are not going to teach that some things are absolute, then we cannot have the rights that are provided that our Founders said were provided by our creator. We will have to get rid of them. We will have to go to being what some already want, and that is a totalitarian government. It is where it always goes. We are already breaking records every day that we continue to live under our Constitution, but we are no longer a religious, moral people.
People thought, historically, when we got rid of slavery, we were so on the right track, and when Dr. King did so much to allow somebody, a little boy like me, to be able to treat like brothers and sisters my brothers and sisters, he did so much. Then somehow now we are regressing where we want to have segregated dorms and segregated this and that. I can't believe that people are wanting to regress.
But, Mr. Speaker, if you are not going to teach some of these absolute moral truths, then we are going to have to give up our rights that our Founders--so many of them and so many over the last 240 years--have died to make sure we had. I don't want to do that. I don't want to give them up.
But Congress has to start using better judgment. Otherwise, it is very clear, historically, we are moving--we have people who are wanting us to move to that point where the rich ride private jets. In the old days, they rode horses and carriages. In the modern day, they will have their private jets. They will jet back and forth around the world, telling everybody how they can't even have a wood-burning stove anymore and that you can't fertilize your fields, so people are starving to death.
Well, those are the peasants because the elite little ruling class has all the food they need. They have the guns they need. The peasants out there, for the good of the climate and for the good of the planet, you are going to live in your refuse, and you are not going to have the benefits that our wonderful ruling elites have.
That is where it is going. That is what progressivism is. That is where it always goes, a totalitarian government, a little elite group. They get to ride, and they have all the food.
Mr. Speaker, look at Sri Lanka. They have an over 90 percent grade in ESG, and now people are starving and the government has been overthrown.
This is where it is going. I don't want to go there. We don't have to go there. Let's keep our rights under the Constitution.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________
