A New Debate Regarding Liberty, Sovereignty and Prosperity of the American People

Floor Speech

A NEW DEBATE REGARDING LIBERTY, SOVEREIGNTY AND PROSPERITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE -- (House of Representatives - December 19, 2007)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

Mr. McCOTTER. Madam Speaker, I know that it is getting close to closing time, and I am in the unenviable position of being between so many good people and the door, so I will try to make sure that I give a truncated version of my simple desultory philippic to my constituents.

We in Congress are charged with the sacred duty of heeding and serving our constituents' aspirations and addressing their tribulations. We also have the responsibility of offering them a national vision and purpose and, most importantly, of putting them first in policymaking, which is why I have risen today to again lay before my constituents what I believe to be the four great generational challenges facing the United States of America.

Like the Greatest Generation, we face four challenges. The Greatest Generation, due to the rise of industrialization, faced social, economic and political turmoil. They faced a world war for freedom against an abjectly evil enemy. They faced the rise of the Soviet superstate as a rival model of governance and strategic threat, and they faced the moral question of whether the constitutional rights of all Americans applied equally regardless of race.

This generation of Americans in the age of globalization faces social, political and economic turmoil. We face a world war for freedom against an intrinsically evil enemy. We face the rise of the Communist Chinese superstate as a rival model of governance and strategic threat, and we face the question of whether moral relativism will erode the foundations of a Nation built upon self-evident truths.

The Greatest Generation faced their challenges consecutively. This generation of Americans faces their challenges simultaneously. In the past year, this Congress, sometimes together, sometimes not, have striven to address some of these challenges, and I would like to quickly go through a couple of them.

In the area of globalization's economic, social and political upheavals, we have seen a continued emphasis on the role of the centralized Federal Government. This is done through taxation, increases in taxation and increases in spending. It is my belief that if we continue to build the monument to Big Government on the backs of the American taxpayer, we will exacerbate the economic and social turmoil, and, yes, political turmoil that they are experiencing. I believe what we need to do is go back to the fundamental concept and change the debate.

The debate about people's money staying in their pockets and about the government spending people's money, which was taken from their pockets, should be this: We must stop discussing how quickly government spending grows and start getting back to talking about how quickly government spending is reduced, because this directly affects the liberty, sovereignty and prosperity of the American people.

And, at least in my District, they feel they are in short supply of their own money and don't believe the Federal Government needs to take more from them.

In the war for freedom, we have seen a change of course in Iraq. It has been contentious and it has been difficult on the political level here in Washington. But, fortunately, progress in Iraq and with our troops is occurring. There is a long way to go, as we know from the fact that so many of our friends and family members that are serving in the military are not home with us for this holiday Christmas season.

But what we have seen, and I want to explain it again, is a fundamental change of course in this sense. The past mistakes of the reconstruction effort were based upon the imposition of a system, a system of governance and a system that was perceived to lead to prosperity. What is now being done, which is much more important and is a lesson for future generations of American policymakers, is that democracy cannot be imposed, liberty can be unleashed. When liberty is unleashed, when a people finally breathe free, as General Petraeus' plan recognizes, we must help them fashion their representative institutions in their own way.

In Iraq, this is being seen through local reconciliation, where you're beginning to see people who are finally out from underneath the oppressive Saddam Hussein regime and starting to come out from the oppressive reign of terror of al Qaeda and other murderers in the country who would take it back to a time when the government ruled through the bullet rather than through the ballot.

What we are seeing is them working with tribal leaders, religious leaders, pillars of order in their community, to begin to reconcile themselves to each other, to begin to recognize the future that they may have if they remain free and resolute in the face of evil. And you are beginning to see this national reconciliation lead to the reduction of violence in Iraq, and you will continue to see it if we remain courageous and remain prudent in our policies. You will continue to see this grow and evolve into a national reconciliation process. Again, this will not happen overnight, but at least this has occurred.

Unfortunately, in my mind, on the third great generational challenge we face, which is Communist China's rise as a strategic threat and rival model of governance, the administration and this Congress have largely continued their policy of unconditional engagement. I think the American people are much further ahead of policymakers in this instance.

As we have recently seen from the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission's report, people who are worried about dangerous imported products from Communist China should be. According to the Economic Security Review Commission's report, because of the closed system of the communist government in China, it is impossible or extremely difficult with any certainty to determine what products are defective or not before they arrive, and it is going to be increasingly difficult as time goes on as the regime consolidates its hold, which means that there is no simple resolution to the issue. We are trying to allow imports from Communist China to come in by spending more American taxpayer moneys on customs or inspections to allow these products to come in, because we will never know with certainty whether they are defective or not because, again, the closed nature of the Communist Chinese regime.

We have also seen in the area of national security repeated attacks by the People's Liberation Army through attacks on America's existing computer networks, both in industry and financial services, and in the United States Government itself. For example, what the Communist Chinese Government likes to do is set up front companies for people who are former members of the People's Liberation Army, and in this instance, we use the name Huawei, that is what it is called, which is trying to purchase a major U.S. supplier of cyberdefense technologies.

Now, this is still, at my last understanding, pending in front of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, despite the fact that our own Office for National Intelligence has told us this is a strategic threat to the United States. Now, how is this occurring? This is occurring because people wish to refuse to believe that the Communist Chinese Government is engaged in massive espionage against the United States of America, both in terms of our private sector and in terms of our public sector, i.e., our Pentagon as being one prime example.

The reason that Americans or their policymakers are so loath to recognize this fact is because there is not a whole lot of support to be anticommunist anywhere, except from the American people. Well, I prefer to have that support than any kind of political or economic elite's momentary approbation. In fact, it was the Economic Security Commission's report that actually steeled my convictions and helped me with this, because we were now able to tell people that according to the Economic Security Review Commission, Communist China's espionage against the United States firms and our governmental entities is likely the number one strategic threat that we are facing at the present time.

So we will continue to work and push on this, not only because this is a strategic threat to us, but also, more importantly, the second part of the equation. Communist China is presenting itself to the world as a rival model of governance to Western democracies. The fundamental tenet of the Communist Chinese approach is this: That liberty is a danger to their people's prosperity and security. I am going to repeat this. The Communist Chinese Government believes that its own people's liberty are a danger, a danger to their stability and prosperity.

This is a direct contradiction to what we believe here in America and in the free world is that people's liberty leads to a nation's stability and prosperity. The reason this is dangerous is we need not look any further than Time Magazine's current Man of the Year to see that this school of thought, this neo-communism has advocates amongst people who were former communists, such as the former President of Russia, Lieutenant Colonel Retired Vladimir Putin.

As we watch Russia slide from the first steps in democracy back towards autocracy, it is Putin who is telling his people that their liberty stopped their prosperity and stability under the Yeltsin years, and if they just cede more liberty, they will again have stability and they will finally have prosperity.

Other tyrants throughout the world are watching this, from Chavez in Venezuela to Castro in Cuba, who is still clinging to power, and they are watching to see in the coming years, in the coming decades, what will be the preferred model of governance in the world.

Now, we know what the dictators would like. We know what all those who would subjugate their fellow human beings beneath their ideological bents would prefer to see. They would prefer to see liberty considered a danger, a threat, to humanity's stability and prosperity.

We will find them continuing to echo the siren song that we hear from people in Beijing and Moscow and elsewhere that echoes the words that we heard from Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, ``Give them miracle, mystery and authority, but above all, give them bread.''

It is a materialist philosophy, it is a cynical philosophy, it is a neocommunist philosophy which we in the United States and the free world must reject. We must again reassert the primacy of liberty to all human beings as their divine right endowed to them by their creator and that the view of our free people that the future belongs to free nations, remains intact, not only for ourselves, but for all those who are oppressed and yearning to breathe free.

In the fourth area, the question of moral relativism eroding our foundational truth, we see this every day. We see this every day in the areas of faith, family, community and country. This Congress needs to do more to help reaffirm the historic role and the critical role that it currently plays, that faith currently plays in the lives of the American people and in the life and perpetuation of the American Republic.

Fortunately, Congressman Randy Forbes, I believe, is going to be introducing a resolution to do just this, and to remind people that the constitutional right under the first amendment is to the free exercise of free religion. It is not for the freedom from religion. It is not for the excoriation of religion and faith from the public square.

In the area of family, we continue to see erosions by the State upon the parents' sovereign and I believe inviolable powers to impart their moral teachings to their children. We have seen this in Maine, where the situation was presented to parents where if you did not want your child to get birth control under the school medical program, then your child would get no health care at all.

This is a diabolical dilemma presented to parents, and there are some that are occurring throughout the country in various locales that are unreported, and this must stop. A parent's right to raise their child and impart their moral teachings to them, the inviability of the parental family structure, of the parent-child relationship, must be respected by this government, must be respected by all governments, and we must take appropriate steps to see that that continues.

In the area of community, we must do more to ensure that the voluntary mediating institutions, nongovernmental institutions, remain intact as a buffer between the sovereign American people and their subservient government.

What de Tocqueville saw when he went through the United States of America and what he expressed to us must always be remembered, that the true strength of America lies in its voluntary associations and its individual senses of community, which then grow upward into the grand Republic which we now have inherited.

If the government goes out of its way to continue to make it difficult for people to join volunteer associations or begins to let it be known or to subtly or directly try to coerce volunteer associations as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, or such as Rotaries, Kiwanises and Chambers of Commerce, or, yes, labor unions, if these voluntary associations are infringed or encroached or eclipsed by the Federal Government, we are going to continue to see an atomization of individuals from their sense of community and we will continue to see a devolution of the true public purpose that is expressed by citizens in our Republic even today.

Finally, in the area of country, certainly we must do more to remind Americans not only of their civic rights and duties as citizens of the United States, but also the history of the United States. How can any individual citizen who is unaware of their rights, who is unaware of their duties, who is unaware of how a bill becomes law, how a constitutional amendment is adopted, how Congress spends money or who has the power of the purse, if they do not understand this, if they do not understand the history of their country, where we have been, where we are going, where we hope to, then they will be like lambs led before the shepherd of big government, because they will not know how to think for themselves in relation to government nor how to defend themselves from government actions and policies when necessary. This fourth area we must not overlook, because in many ways it is one of the most critical.

That is why when in facing these challenges, I believe it is important that we remember our shared American philosophical heritage, which is this: Men and women are transcendent children of God, equally endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.

Secondly, government was instituted to defend citizens' inalienable rights and to facilitate citizens' pursuit of good and true happiness.

Third, over the generations, divine providence has established and revealed through tradition, prescriptive rights and custom within communities, how order, justice and freedom, each essential, coequal and mutually reinforcing, are best arranged and nurtured for humanity to pursue the good and true happiness.

Finally, human happiness is endangered by every political ideology, for each is premised upon abstract ideas. Each claims a superior insight into human nature not revealed through historical experience, each proffers a secular utopia unattainable by an imperfect humanity, and each demands an omnipotent centralized government to forcefully impose its vision upon an unenlightened and unwilling population.

This is a shared heritage that transcends simply Republicanism or Democratism, for this is what was in the seminal documents of our Nation and this is what our Founders set out to do. It is from this shared philosophical tradition that we have been able to see in the United States the creation and perpetuation, even up to our generation, of American excellence.

Now, American excellence has a foundation and four cornerstones. Each of these is mutually reinforcing. Americans understand that our excellence is built upon a foundation of liberty, and the four cornerstones are sovereignty, security, prosperity and truth.

If we think about them individually, it becomes much more clear. Your liberty comes from God, not the government. Your sovereignty is in your soul, not in the soil. Your security comes not from the thin hopes of appeasement, your security comes from our collective love of liberty and from the courage of our fellow citizen soldiers who defend us in hours of maximum danger. Our prosperity comes from the innovation and perspiration of free people engaged in free enterprise, not from the growth of a government or from centralized planning or from higher taxes or from increased government spending. And, finally, our truths are communal. They have preserved over time. They have been perpetuated by families and institutions of faith and voluntary associations, and we revere them every day by voluntarily celebrating a culture of life.

This is what American exceptionalism is supported by. If we turn our back on that concept, then America is no longer an excellent Nation. If we go back and try to determine that somehow America exists to emulate other nations rather than America existing to inspire the world, we will be cheating our future generations of Americans of the legacy which we ourselves have inherited and which we ourselves so enjoy.

It seems to me that in this period of time that is very difficult, we must also make sure that we remember to have two goals as elected officials in this Congress. I think that the first goal we should have is to prevent the centralized Federal Government from growing ever larger and unaccountable by taking citizens' liberty and prosperity. And that is what happens through taxing and spending powers. And we must also reduce and decentralize the Federal Government and empower Americans to exercise their inherited and inalienable rights within a culture of faith, family, community, and country.

To obtain these goals, I believe that we must take the following critical steps: One, we must empower the sovereign American people to protect and promote their God-given and constitutionally recognized and protected rights. All policies that we pursue should promote the decentralization of Federal governmental powers to the American people or to their most appropriate and closest unit of government. I believe we must also defend Americans' enduring moral order of faith, family, community, and country from all enemies. We must foster a dynamic market of entrepreneurial opportunity for all Americans. And we must honor and nurture humanity of scale and Americans' relations and endeavors.

This last point I would like to emphasize a little more directly. In the age of globalization, much like the age of industrialization, average Americans often felt that so many things were occurring to them outside of their control that they felt almost impotent in the face of the major changes that were occurring to them and radically altering their traditional way of life and their livelihoods. Fortunately, in the age of industrialization, Presidents with vision from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt were able to help Americans through that transformational time.

We too must have such sagacity, because we too must recognize that in the age of globalization Americans oftentimes feel powerless against many of the forces that are shaping and radically altering their lives. And they look to the Federal Government, their duly elected servants, to try to help make sense of it, to try to help alleviate their sense of danger. And we must do this. We must do this with empathy, we must do this with creativity, we must do it with integrity. For to simply deny it does not exist or to simply say that somehow there are these mechanical determinative forces out there that no one can control such as globalization is not to do the American people justice, it is not to do ourselves any honor, or to provide to ourselves any honor in their service.

We can impact decisions that are the result of human decisions. Globalization is not a deterministic, mechanistic force, much as Engels and Marx said communism was and much as many of the globalists today say free trade is or any other economic determinative. This is not outside of people's control. People can still think their way through it. They can make sound policies within your Federal Government, with your help. And we can try to get through this difficult time with as little social, economic and political turmoil as we can. Or, instead, we can turn a blind eye to it, and we can watch as people continue to suffer many of the effects of globalization which could be ameliorated and which must be ameliorated.

Madam Speaker, I know the hour is late so I will not dawdle much longer. But I just want to say that while we have come to find ourselves in a global age, it is a perilous global age, but it is not a global age without hope. We are not the first generation of Americans; we are not the first people on this earth to face momentous challenges. And I believe that, like our fellow Americans before us and so many Americans, we will meet these challenges and we will transcend them. I believe we will preserve American excellence. I believe we will promote and defend the institutions of faith, family, community, and country against all enemies. And I believe that one day future generations of Americans will look back and say, well, they argued a lot; but they had a lot to argue about, but in the end they managed to get it right and we remain a free people. And I believe that the United States of America then, to the rest of the world, will be an inspiration to them for all the oppressed, for all those who yearn to breathe free, and that they will never lose hope that some day they, too, will enjoy in their own homes what we enjoy in ours.

Again, it will not be easy, it will not be immediate, but it will be done. We will preserve our shared heritage of freedom, and we will ensure that the permanent things amidst our ephemeral existence are preserved for future generations to come, because it is imperative that we make sure that things such as love, truth, beauty, justice, and honor remain because they surpasseth all politics and they give meaning to our somewhat troubled and yet ultimately majestic existence.

Madam Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks by expressing my personal and my constituents' sincere appreciation and heartfelt prayers for the men and women who are serving the cause of freedom overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere throughout the world, as well as extending them to their families. May God continue to bless them and all of the majestic American people.

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