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SUPPORTING ISRAEL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, I was speaking with my friend, Congressman Green. And he is my friend. We have differences on issues, but he is a brother, and, anyway, it is nice to have friends.
I appreciated my colleague, Mr. Raskin, pointing to the violence in the Middle East. That is a tremendous problem. I am going through a new book right now by Os Guinness, ``Magna Carta of Humanity,'' and one of the points he makes early on in the book is that Christians should take note when Jews are under attack. When Israel is under attack, Christians are going to be next. And Israel should take note that when Christians are under attack, Israel is going to be next.
Certainly, in my lifetime, what I have seen when the United States blesses, does things helpful to Israel, we seem to be blessed, and when we betray our ally Israel, we don't seem to be blessed. I have looked for a verse like that, that says those who betray Israel will be blessed, and I haven't found that one in the Bible.
The Bible--those of us that have looked into the history of the House of Representatives and the Senate--is the most quoted book in the history of Congress in session on the Record. So it is worth looking to things like that.
When I said that running for Congress years ago was a calling, a reporter asked if I heard voices, I told the reporter: ``I wish I heard voices.'' Life would be so much easier if I heard an audible voice telling me what to do. But since I don't hear voices, under my religious beliefs, I seek wisdom by reading the Bible, by praying, and by seeking wise counsel. That is what some of the leaders of Israel obviously have been doing, but they get put into a box.
Four thousand rockets launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip, and why are there people in the Gaza Strip who would do such a thing? It is because Israel, in the hopes of peace, made the unilateral gesture of giving the Gaza Strip, a place where there were so many Jewish Israelis living there--they had wonderful homes, many had greenhouses. They could live there. They could provide for their food there.
Thinking a unilateral gesture would be recognized as an ultimate effort at true peace, Israel handed over the Gaza Strip to Palestinians, and that is not necessarily the Palestinian homeland. But they handed it over, and it wasn't too long before most of the greenhouses were destroyed and tunnels were found. I think 9 miles of tunnels have recently been destroyed that were being used to smuggle things into Israel itself.
That unilateral effort for peace by Israel has ended up being one of the worst nightmares for Israel.
Most days, as I understand it, the rockets are launched. They never know when they are coming. Children live in fear every single day, not knowing if a rocket is going to come their way and kill them. Parents have to have a safe room where, when they hear the siren signaling that bombs are coming, they have to grab their kids and run to the safe room.
Some years back, when I was in Israel and was having a conversation with a mom who lived in Israel, and they had had many rockets come their way, the siren went off. She was in the car. There was no safe room to run to. So her tiny boy--I think he was 5 or 6--she just leaned over and covered him with her body in case the car was hit. It wasn't hit.
When the rocket attack was over, her son was really upset and said:
``Mama, please don't ever do that again. If you are going to die from a rocket attack, I want to die with you.'' That is something the Israelis live with every day.
Rockets are far more sophisticated now than they were when the rocket attacks first started. But as I have pointed out to Prime Minister Netanyahu before, there has never been a time when Israel gave away land trying to buy peace that that land was not used as a staging area from which to attack Israel. That is the way they are rewarded every time they give away land that is under their control.
In the Sinai attacks, they are not launching with rockets from there, but President el-Sisi told me that there were probably more guns per person in the Sinai when he took over as President than any other place he was aware of. There were so many weapons. Once Israel turned that over, it just became a place where there were lots of weapons. There were tunnels into Israel. So, of course, when there are tunnels that allow people to come into Israel with weapons, with ways to kill Israelis, then the Israelis have to use what is known as self-defense.
As far as our history, I read last year that one of the basic goals of BLM was to destroy Western-Style families. And I shrugged to myself, Western-Style families? Those aren't Western-Style families. That came from Moses. Moses said it came from God.
It wasn't Western civilization-style families. It was what Moses said when he said a man shall leave his father and mother, and a woman will leave her home, and the two will become one. Then when Jesus was asked about marriage and divorce, he quoted Moses verbatim, a man shall leave his father and mother, the woman will leave her home, the two will become one flesh. Then Jesus added a line that Moses had not used, and that is when Jesus said, and what God has joined together, let no one separate or put asunder. Later, the Apostle Paul quoted Moses and Jesus.
So knowing all that, when I hear BLM wants to destroy Western-Style families, they are not Western style. They are Mosaic. They are from Moses, as confirmed by Jesus. This is the best building block for a society, for a civilization.
Naturally, if anyone is going to take us into a totalitarian government, an Orwellian government where--we don't say Big Brother anymore. Orwell called it Big Brother, I will say that. But now, under the current rules of the House, we would say big sibling, big sibling totalitarian government with a ministry of truth that every day rewrites history to make the government look better.
Then, of course, they had the Ministry of Love, so that if you say anything that is different from what the Ministry of Truth said you had to say, then you are picked up by the Ministry of Love and tortured for hours, days, weeks, months, or years until you disclaim what you said about the Ministry of Truth's inaccuracy.
Those are the kinds of things that Orwell wrote about in the late 1940s. He had been through cancer treatment, so some think that is what gave him inspiration for the kind of torture that the Ministry of Love was putting people through. But he went up, as I recall, to Scotland and wrote from a friend's home there the book 1984. As I have said before, the only thing he appears to have gotten wrong was the year; it wasn't 1984. But we are seeing these tactics.
We even have people proposing here at the Capitol that we should have a ministry that specifies exactly what truth is, and then anybody that says anything different than truth that the ministry here or the Federal agency here puts out, they should be able to be arrested for a crime. And I am like, wow, that is right out of Orwell.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Owens). I love Burgess Owens. I am thrilled that he is a Member of Congress, and every day I serve with him, I am more grateful he is here.
Honoring Roger Morgan
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I honor a great man, public servant, and Vista Heights Middle School's head custodian, Roger Morgan, from Saratoga Springs, Utah.
When COVID-19 disrupted normalcy last year, Roger did what he always does: He anticipated the needs of others and sprang into action.
He installed plexiglass and hand-sanitizing stations. He stayed late each night to disinfect the entire school. During the summer, he cleaned out the air vents to increase filtration.
He was proactive and diligent in filling PPE from district, State, and school funds. As shipments arrived, he organized and distributed the supplies.
When the State of Utah requested a rapid testing site at Vista Heights, Roger worked overtime to set it up and cleaned the units every day to help facilitate the accessibility of this testing option.
The praise for Roger is overwhelming. He is a team player, and he represents the Fourth District's spirit of service and compassion.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate Roger, District Four's first hometown hero.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as I have told my friend--he wears that big shiny Super Bowl ring; he hasn't let me wear it yet--any time he comes to the floor, I will always yield to him. I appreciate anything he has to say.
Having talked with Prime Minister Netanyahu on multiple occasions, I have very high regard for him. He is in such a difficult situation, and I don't think there is anybody who characterizes the situations that arise in Israel better than my friend--hopefully, it won't hurt her for me to say she is a friend--but Caroline Glick, just a wonderful perspective on the things in Israel.
I know they were going through a tough time as far as organizing government. I hope it works out. But Israel needs a strong leader, in my humble opinion, like Prime Minister Netanyahu because they are under attack. Every time Israel has tried to placate people that hate them, it hasn't worked out well.
In the Gaza Strip, it is controlled by Hamas. I bet there is an excellent chance that money that the United States has sent to Iran, and we know money that the U.S. has sent to the Palestinians, ends up funding schools that teach hate for Jews, to name holidays and streets for people that have effectively blown up innocent Israelis.
But it is scary here in the United States to hear more and more anti-
Jewish, anti-Israel rhetoric. That does not bode well for the future of the United States.
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John Adams had some great writings on importance of the Jewish people, and the importance of their existence to civilization. And there is a good chance if you see people that think the answer to their problems is blowing up innocent people that they hate, they are badly mistaken.
And so, coming back around to January 6, anybody that engaged in violence here on January 6 should be punished, and any such violence should not be minimized. If I were still a felony judge and people that had engaged in violence on January 6 here came before me, I would have no problem sentencing them. We can't have that kind of conduct.
And as I and so many of my friends have said repeatedly, the most effective protest is peaceful protest--learning from the incredible Christian man, a Christian minister named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Weather Underground, Bill Ayers' friends, they tried violence. It didn't work. They didn't accomplish anything. Of course, when they started moving into universities and getting tenure and teaching children to love socialism, they became much more effective than those days when they were blowing things up trying to kill people.
But there is so much more to be helped by peaceful protest. Make your voices heard. And just as the President said on January 6, it needs to be peaceful, but make your voices heard.
I would love it if our friends across the aisle had been as condemning of people in Antifa or BLM that engaged in violence, or people that chased my wife and I down the street after the President's speech at the White House last year. I wish the people on the other side of the aisle would condemn those things as well. Some of us condemn violence on both sides, no matter who it is supporting. It is wrong, and should be. But it turns out it wasn't all violence here at the Capitol.
This is an article by Julie Kelly. She has probably done greater research and reporting about January 6 than anybody that I have seen. This article from May 16 says, ``Video shows U.S. Capitol Police gave protestors okay to enter.''
Now, we know that there was some violence here at the Capitol; there was. Of course, it was a Capitol Police that shot Ashley Babbitt, killed her, I think a Navy veteran--but a military veteran; she was unarmed. But we also know that after hearing they were armed, that these people came ready to shoot Members of Congress, that at least for weeks, there was no arrest, no charges of anybody in the Capitol for having a firearm.
Some apparently used a flag, a couple other things, in an aggressive manner. And if they assaulted someone with those, they should be severely punished. But it wasn't an ``armed,'' as we think of now. Maybe if you were back in the 1500s, you would say they were armed if they had a little battalion like one 18-year old had that stayed in jail for weeks and weeks and weeks in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day, while people that have burned and looted and killed in other cities, part of Antifa and those protests, even the Vice President back then was trying to raise bail money for them to help get them out. Not so. No help for people that were jailed from the January 6 incident.
And as I understand, there have been over 450 arrested, and many of those, it has been reported, we had many Federal agents show up. A couple from Alaska had their homes ransacked before the Federal agents finally accepted the fact that the woman was not the woman they had a picture of, who had stolen Speaker Pelosi's laptop.
You would think as sophisticated as law enforcement is now, that our Federal agents, FBI would have been sophisticated enough to know whether somebody in the picture was the person whose house they were ransacking. But then again, FBI, it is the only law enforcement entity I am aware of that doesn't like to have any video of statements made by potential defendants. They prefer to write their own version of what the defendant or target says so they are not contradicted by having audio or videotape somewhere.
But in any event, Julie Kelly's article says, ``newly obtained video shows United States Capitol police officers speaking with several January 6 protestors, including Jacob Chansley, the so-called Q Shaman, inside the Capitol that afternoon.''
One officer identified in the video and confirmed by charging documents as Officer Keith Robishaw, appears to tell Chansley's group that they won't stop them from entering the building: ``We are not against, you need to show us . . . no attacking, no assault, remain calm, Robishaw warns.'' And Chansley and other protestors instructed the crowd to act peaceful. ``This has to be peaceful,'' Chansley yelled. ``We have the right to peacefully assemble.''
The video directly contradicts what government prosecutors alleged in a complaint filed January 8 against Chansley. In the complaint:
``Robishaw and other officers calmed the protestors somewhat and directed them to leave the area from the same way they had entered. Chansley approached Officer Robishaw and screamed, among other things, that this was their House and that they were there to take the Capitol and to get Congressional leaders.''
Well, that is not on the video. And then when you see that, you have Feds that have made these allegations in writing and actually signed their name to them, well, that kind of gives us an indication why they don't want the 14,000 hours of video that would show everything that happened here at the Capitol. They don't want them released. They are fighting against releasing them. They don't want people to see them, which is a bit unusual because in the United States, one of the points of the revolution was to have an open government where you didn't have secret prosecutions and secret evidence like the Soviet Union would use, like Kafka talked about in his book, The Trial.
And yet, often these days, you will have a SWAT team of Federal agents swarm and arrest people, like we had a hearing some years back. My friend, Bobby Scott, Democrat from Virginia, and I were both very concerned about the civil rights. And we didn't know what political party, if any, that these people that were being abused claimed, but we knew they were being abused regardless of race, creed, color. They were being abused and the Federal process was being abused. And that has gone on in Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican administrations. It ought to be a concern to everybody.
And so, secrecy surrounding January 6 just should not exist. There is no reason for it. Let everyone see exactly what happened. Don't try to hide the facts. Don't pull an FBI and only give us a written account of your interpretation of what was said and done. Let us see the video. And don't edit it. Let us see the video. Quit trying to hide the 14,000 hours of videotape. Who are you trying to hide? Why are you trying to hide it?
Well, this story gives an indication, perhaps, why these things would be hidden. And, yes, I am extremely conservative, but it doesn't matter who is being abused by abusive law officers. Truth and justice need to rule out. And this raises great concerns.
So, under the rule of the House, we are not allowed to run videotape or audiotape, so the best we could do is have blowups. This is Mr. Watson--he doesn't look a whole lot like me--but Mr. Watson, and it says: ``The police here are willing to work with us and cooperate peacefully like our First Amendment allows.''
And the video reveals Officer Robishaw, and he is saying, ``We are not against--you need to show us . . . do you understand. No attacking, no assault, remain calm.''
And then you have Mr. Watson, who comes back, and he turns to the group there and says: ``We are not going to assault, we are going to be heard. Everybody--this must be peaceful.''
So there were people engaging in violence for which they need to be punished. And there were people who were trying to engage peacefully. And that was most of the tens of thousands who were outside the Capitol that didn't come into the Capitol, that had been down for the President's speech at the other end of Constitution or Pennsylvania Avenue that didn't even have time to get up here to the Capitol before some folks entered the Capitol.
So there is a lot that needs to be learned, and I hope that we will have friends on the other side of the aisle who will join us in demanding the release of the 14,000 hours of videotape.
There is a story from FOX News that a Politico reporter falsely suggests U.S. Capitol Police condemned GOP lawmakers for opposing the January 6 commission. That was an anonymous letter. We don't know if it was more than one, who it was, were they all Capitol Police, was there more than one. We don't know, because it was anonymous. And then the Capitol Police came out and said we are not taking a position in this whatsoever.
Now, a New York Post reported--and this is Elizabeth Elizalde--she reported back January 13 that Mr. Watson was out on bond for trafficking marijuana and LSD at the time he traveled to Washington, D.C. He had been out on $103,000 bond on a drug trafficking case. Well, that is not somebody that should have been leading a protest here in Washington. But yet, here he was. And even then, he did not want to engage in any violence.
But then, I ran across this story from May 7, and I had not seen this story until this week. I somehow missed it. The lame stream media did not appear to be reporting it. It is from The Orlando Sentinel, and it is an AP story, so I don't know why more places didn't get the story out there, but it is from Tallahassee.
``A Florida man was convicted Thursday of trying to organize an armed response to supporters of former President Donald Trump for an expected gathering at the State Capitol in January ahead of Joe Biden's Presidential inauguration.
``Daniel Alan Baker, 33, of Tallahassee, was convicted of two counts of transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure another person. Baker used social media to recruit people in a plot to create a circle around protestors and trap them in the Capitol, according to the FBI. The court documents describe what it said were a series of threats of violence made by Baker, along with a prediction of civil war. Baker was described as anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacists, and anti-police.
{time} 1345
Anyway, that is an interesting story that I didn't see played up by the media too big. This is an important story, and it does need to be addressed.
Unfortunately, when we talk about rules violations, it turns out, on June 22 of 2016, Republicans in the majority were prevented from having an official proceeding. I didn't realize it back then, but I knew it violated all kinds of House rules, but when Democrat Members of Congress took over, and one of the Democrat Members grabbed the microphone and would not let a Republican have it.
Anyway, we were prevented from having an official session of Congress, and they held the floor, held a sit-in down here for over 24 hours. And it turns out that a charge that is being leveled at some of the people, including people who were peacefully here, like some of those in Watson's group who actually were here peacefully, they are being charged with impeding an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. 1512.
I didn't realize it, but when that was signed into law before I got here back in 2002, it carried a 20-year potential sentence for impeding an official proceeding. It says ``corruptly,'' which in the definition of the statute means with intent to keep the official proceeding from happening.
So it seems there were many violations of that criminal law back then. Probably the limitations has run out, and I am not suggesting we go back and arrest people for violating that law back in 2016. I am suggesting that when people violate the law that are in Congress--not just rules, but actually violate criminal laws--I would hope they would be a little less condemning of others for violating the same law that they did.
Hopefully, we will see a little more bipartisan work. We had friends across the aisle saying, gee, the 9/11 Commission was completely bipartisan, both sides worked together well and wanted to get to the bottom of it. But it was clear the way the January 6 commission was being set up, where Democrats pick all of the staff, that this is not going to be a fair situation. It is not going to work out like the 9/11 Commission because this is a different time. I never thought I would see times like this when we really do have different goals.
Some in this body will condemn Israel for defending themselves like they have, and not say one word about the rockets--the 4,000 rockets that have flown and killed innocent Israelis. And I know there are people in the United States who say there is no such thing as an innocent Israeli, we need to wipe them all out, we need to kill every one of them, the area from the river to the sea should be free of Jews.
That gets really scary when people in America say that, feel that, because that really falls right into the same type of things that were being said in the 1930s in Europe, and we know what that led to.
As Barney Fife used to say, that needs to be nipped in the bud. That needs to be stopped. It is getting dangerous not just for this country, but for all of civilization.
There are people who want anarchy, including Antifa. There are people within Antifa who that is what they want. And then there are people who are Marxists, socialists, and BLM, their ultimate goal is to create a Marxist government.
It is interesting, because Marx was so wrong about so much. He just missed it. He totally missed the idea that you could have a middle class that would be the real strength in a country, as it has been in the United States. He thought it was going to be a class revolution, that the workers of the world would unite and rebel against that small thin veneer of a ruling class.
He didn't foresee that the real rulers would be the middle class. But as this country has progressed, we have seen billionaires arise, who think they are above the law; who think that, gee, if we move into a totalitarian government, they will be part of that thin veneer of a ruling class.
Unfortunately, though, they are brilliant in business, creating monopolies and making billions of dollars, even though some don't even pay their workers enough that they can avoid food stamps. But they don't know enough about history. They don't know enough about Marxist movements. Because, sure, people who want a totalitarian, Marxist, socialist system, they are glad to have that money. $500 million to help in the Democrat effort to win the last election by just one of those oligarchs, they are glad to have that money.
But history tells us that if the Marxists take over, the first thing they do is take all that money.
Do you think Bernie Sanders is kidding about his disgust at billionaires?
No. They will take your money. They will use it to win. And then after they win, they will take your money and you will either go to a Gulag or you are put to death. They are not going to leave billionaires around to manage things. They will take your money and you will go the way, as so many Soviets did. I hope they wake up in time to realize.
But Marx was so wrong. Why are people following him? He was proven wrong in the Soviet Union. He was proven wrong in Venezuela.
And then along came Gramsci. Back in the 1940s, he was put in Italian jail. He figured out, okay, Marx had it wrong; we can't get our revolution and overthrow Democratic Republic, like here in the United States, by having the middle class unite and overthrow the most wealthy.
The only way to get it done in a place like that is not workers of the world unite, but it is to go into institutions and create an institutional war where you take over institutions. You pit institution against institution. You go to war against the culture. That is what we are seeing in America. That is what is being utilized.
Things like the family, no matter how many studies repeatedly show that the best odds for a child to be very successful is to come from a two-parent family and a well-grounded family. That is it. That is the best chance to succeed in life. Thank God, there are so many of the most important people in the history of the United States who have come from single-mom families, single-parent families. But the odds are best if it is a traditional family, like Moses, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul talked about.
And I will never forget a murder trial of the leader of a gang, over which I presided as judge. He didn't testify on the merits of the case. He was charged with murder. He murdered a Hispanic friend, but he thought that this guy had ratted him out to the police. He was convicted of killing this guy.
As people testified during the trial on the merits of guilt or innocence, they were disparaging his gang and the gang members, and the violence in which they were engaged. So once he was convicted, his attorney, smartly and wisely, advised his client not to testify on sentencing, because once you start testifying, as I warned him outside the presence of the jury, you waive your right to remain silent.
At that point, once you waive your right to remain silent, you are subject to cross-examination. You do have to answer the questions that are relevant and material. And you if you don't, you can be put in jail and kept in jail for not answering those questions.
He understood all of that and he went against the advice of his attorney. He explained the reason he had to get up there and testify. He sat through the whole trial hearing people talk badly about his gang members, and it was an emotional thing to him.
He told us, everybody in the courtroom, that he was sick of hearing the gang members being called names, being accused of things. And he said: They are the only family I ever had. They are my family.
He didn't have a father, that he knew of. His mother was working and she was gone much of the time. And, as he said, that gang was his family.
And I was thinking, that is what happens when you have a war on poverty that starts by bribing families to get the father out of the home. Now, I know that was not the intent. The intent was to help single moms, but the effect of the Federal Government paying people to not have fathers in the home, going back to the mid-60s, has changed this society, has eliminated fathers from the lives of children, and has prevented many from getting the education that was once so highly sought in America.
When my youngest daughter was going into high school, one of the high school leaders, employees there, indicated that about 40 percent of her class would not graduate and would drop out of school. I couldn't believe those numbers. Forty percent in Tyler, Texas, will not likely graduate and drop out of school.
You can't maintain an advanced society when 40 percent of a generation are not learning to read and write, and they are not finishing even a secondary education. You can't maintain a society like that.
{time} 1400
We are doomed unless we get that turned around. That is still the case if we don't get this turned around, where they get a better education.
People will say: Well, more Federal Government is the answer.
It hasn't been. Back when the States and local government were totally in charge of the education of students through high school, we had a higher percentage graduating back then. They were doing better on tests back then.
I remember in the early nineties--I believe that is when it was--that there was a report that SAT scores had been getting lower than they were back in the seventies, when I took the SAT. So they had made an adjustment in the scoring of the SAT so that the scores appeared to be better.
Back then, I asked the president at Texas A&M, when I was down there on the board of directors of the former student association: When they adjusted the scoring of the SAT, what did that do?
He said: Well, there was a formula so you can't say it added a specific number of points, but, on average, it probably added 200 points or so to the current takers of this SAT scores.
Also, that it wouldn't look so bad since the Federal Government basically started telling the States and local governments what to do about education. So apparently we were doing better back in the late sixties and seventies on our SATs until the Federal Government got more involved. We were doing better on our SATs until President Carter created a Department of Education.
When I took it, I did very well. It got me into the honors program at Texas A&M. I am sure that shocks people who think that I am the dumbest guy in Congress. I was part of the honors program, and that was really nice. About 150 of the best scores on the SAT of the class of about 3,500, I think we were.
But how in the world do students not get as educated after we create a Federal Department of Education that starts dictating what students have to do to be educated?
It sounds like maybe we need to get back to the 10th Amendment observation that those powers not specifically enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the States and people. It seemed like perhaps the best education control is local control, where the parents can be more hands-on.
But I understand when, at the same time, the Federal Government is paying to have only a single parent and not paying for two parents to be in the home that the studies were right. It helps to have a two-
parent home to increase the odds of success for the children.
We are having a hearing that I left. I had finished my part in the hearing and came over here. But it is on guns and discussions about mass gun shootings that break your heart. Innocent people. There seem to be so many more now.
But if you are going to have Weather Underground people in universities teaching that there is no right, there is no wrong, it is all relative; if you are going to have people teaching there is no God, there is no ultimate source of right, wrong, and justice; if you are going to be teaching that, then you are going to have what our Founders would have called an immoral and an irreligious people.
John Adams was a fan of the Constitution, although there were lots of bitter fights. Back in those days, they could yell, they could fuss, and they could do like we do. I fussed at friends across the aisle, and I really like them. I just think they are wrong on some things. It doesn't keep me from liking them if we disagree. But as he said, ``this Constitution is intended for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.''
He is right.
We have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and it is not to be infringed upon by the Federal Government or the State Government. But the problem is when we quit teaching about right and wrong; when we started preventing the greatest, most purchased book in the history of the world, the Bible, from being utilized in schools, then it created a vacuum, it created a void. And that was filled by people who were a bit hedonistic and began teaching that there is no ultimate right or wrong.
C.S. Lewis talked about he was proud to be an atheist. Or you could say agnostic, Mr. Speaker. He just didn't believe there was any way to determine that there really was a God. He used to like to goad people who would say they were Christians: Well, tell me, if there is a good God, how can there be so much injustice in the world?
No matter what they said, especially these debates he would have with other Oxford professors or students when they would try to explain why there was a good God even though there was so much injustice, he would come back and say: Yes, that is all well and good, but wouldn't it be easier just to say there is no such thing as a good God?
One day he realized, how could he possibly say there was injustice in the world if there was not somewhere some absolute source of right and wrong and justice and injustice?
Because, as he said, it would be like a man blind from birth trying to describe light. You can't describe justice if there isn't an ultimate source of fairness and justice. And that ultimate source put a little of that in every heart.
Some develop calluses. It is kind of like the olfactory. I have read that that is supposed to be the most sensitive sense, the best memory of any of our senses. I think Mr. Science or somebody was explaining one day on television that the olfactory nerves are a bit like a cup. Those cells fill up with a smell, and it is like filling up a cup with water. Once it fills up, you can't detect that there is more water out there because it is full. The olfactory, once it is full of a smell, it quits detecting the smell is there.
It is the same way when we are around evil or wrongdoing long enough. I saw it as a judge many times. Mothers would say: Hey, don't hang around with those people, they are bad news. And they would hang around with them. And when I would sentence them, they would say: My mother said I shouldn't be hanging out with these guys; I did, and it ruined my life.
Mr. Speaker, if you hang around with evil long enough, then you quit noticing the good. That has happened for too many people. They didn't have families and they didn't have churches and institutions that they were part of that taught them there is a right and wrong.
Once C.S. Lewis realized there has to be some source of absolute right and wrong, then he realized there has to be a God, and then he went from there to becoming a Christian. As he said, just because there are different degrees of recognition and appreciation for justice doesn't mean that there isn't an absolute source of justice. He said that it is like music. Some people come closer to hitting the right note than others. It doesn't mean the music doesn't exist.
But in this country, we had that as a solid basis. Our founding was not about 1619 or 1620. The Pilgrims didn't come over because of slavery. They came over for freedom of religion, as a place where Christians would not be persecuted. Despite different denominations battling and interdenominational battles, people, for most of our history, have not been persecuted for being Christians.
Until recently, we didn't see a lot of anti-Semitism in the United States, but it is growing. As my friend, Brad Sherman, was pointing out, it is alarming to see the anti-Semitism growing in violence, as the event out in California.
So I hope that we can come back to a place where people who may have violated the impeding and official proceeding, as happened January 22, 2016, will be a little more understanding of people engaged in peaceful protest, who didn't and wouldn't engage in violence.
We will agree on the violence: they need to be punished. But I hope that we can work together to advance this country to the point where there is fairness, there is justice, and we are not going to discriminate against people because of the color of their skin. We will be a colorblind society.
Dr. King had a dream, and people are turning it into a nightmare. Let's get back to his dream and make it happen so that he can be the luminary that God intended him to be.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 88
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