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AMERICA'S STRENGTH LIES IN THE RISE OF PROFILES OF COURAGE WHEN THEY
ARE MOST NEEDED
______
HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE
of texas
in the house of representatives
Friday, May 7, 2021
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I am a proud progressive Texas Democrat in the tradition of the late Governor Ann Richards and my predecessors Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland so it may hurt more than help them to say that Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-
ranking Republican in the House, Senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican standard-bearer, and President George W. Bush, the last Republican president to amass a popular vote majority, exceed 50 percent in approval ratings, and win reelection all have my undying respect for the manner in which they have stood steadfast in defense of the Constitution, the country, and their principles in the face of brutal, withering, and unwarranted attack by their party's leadership and rank and file.
All of them have repeatedly rejected and denounced publicly, unequivocally, and fiercely the Republican ``Big Lie'' that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and rife with fraud. They are modern-
day profiles in courage.
They all embody John F. Kennedy's dictum that ``sometimes party loyalty demands too much.''
Like many Members of Congress, in the course of my service I have found often that vigorous debate and acceptance of different views, if allowed to be heard, can result in socially transformative and life-
affirming legislation, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.
Some might think it surprising for a member of an opposing party to go against the convention of non-interference when one's adversary is in the process of inflicting harm upon itself.
I have chosen to ignore this convention because I am a firm believer in the promise of a more perfect union.
And I believe in America and its future.
Our children listen to and absorb what we say and do.
We cannot let them see the brutalization of voices that are telling the truth about January 6 and the attack on the Citadel of Democracy without defending those voices.
I believe these persons are patriots and I join them in my affection for the written values of this nation evidenced in our Constitution.
I am a constitutional patriot who believes Bush, Romney, Cheney have put America first.
Congresswoman Cheney, the House Republican Conference Chair, has drawn fire for being unrelenting in her defense of constitutional government and for not backing down one iota from her claim that the domestic insurrection led by terrorists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, for the avowed purpose of disrupting Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated duty to tally the votes cast by presidential electors and announce the results to the nation and the world was the intentional result of Donald Trump's handiwork:
The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.
We cannot ignore the fact that these domestic terrorists were intending to kill officers of the Congress, the Vice-President, other Members, and law enforcement officers if need be.
Sen. Romney of Utah, a state carried by Trump by more than 20 percentage points and the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is the only Republican senator who voted to convict and remove Trump from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. Twice.
Former President George W. Bush was one of the first Republicans to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris on their election victory and has stated that the GOP is embarking on a ``suicide path'' with its adherence to the Big Lie and flirtation with the idea of forming a congressional ``Anglo-Saxon Caucus.''
More Republican leaders are needed to join this ``Chorus of the Courageous,'' to put country over party, and to do their part to preserve and keep real the American boast that this is a land of government of, by, and for the people.
At several moments in our Nation's past, men and women of principle, courage, and unyielding commitment to the Nation's founding ideals have stood forward at moments of maximum peril and danger in defense of the country's enduring values and principles.
Men like Congressman L. Brooks Hayes of Arkansas, who alienated powerful governor Orval E. Faubus during the 1957 integration crisis when he refused to support Faubus' effort to keep the Little Rock public schools racially segregated.
Or like U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., U.S. House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., who went to the White House to tell Richard Nixon, the winner of one of the greatest landslide victories in history, that he must resign, or he would be impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate.
Or women like U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, the first woman to serve both the House and the Senate and the first Republican senator to denounce the demagogue Sen. Joe McCarthy during the height of the Red Scare. In her famous ``Declaration of Conscience'' speech to the Senate, she said:
``Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism.''
[. . .]
``It is high time we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom.''
In perpetuating Trump's Big Lie, Republican leaders are cravenly choosing narrow partisan interests over the national interest.
They are rejecting the wisdom of the founding father of conservatism, the English statesman Sir Edmund Burke, who said:
[The national state] is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Burke understood, as did conservative statesmen, political leaders, and scholars that an elected official's duty was not simply to be an
``instructed delegate,'' parroting and following their constituents' temporary and inchoate passions, but also to be an ``enlightened trustee'' bringing experience and judgment to elevate and inform the public discourse and understanding.
What is needed today is a semblance of the will and courage of Abraham Lincoln, the greatest Republican of all. In his famous 1860 Cooper Union Address, Lincoln exhorted and inspired adherents to hold true to their beliefs in equality and that slavery was a moral evil:
What will convince that we do not threaten their property? This and this only: cease to call slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. All they ask, we can grant, if we think slavery right. All we ask, they can grant if they think it wrong. Right and wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield?
Let us not grope for some middle ground between right and wrong. Let us not search in vain for a policy of don't care on a question about which we do care. Nor let us be frightened by threats of destruction to the government.
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty[.]
This is the moral and political courage that is so conspicuous by its absence in Republicans leaders today. America's strength lies in the ability of everyone--Democrats, Republicans, and independents--to speak truth loudly and proudly in the face of adversity, and to power.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 79
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.
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