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Defend American values, Don't Dismantle American Principles
House of Representatives - July 21, 2005

Mr. Speaker, the definition of a patriot is someone who proudly supports and defends his or her country and its way of life. Today we patriots rose to vote against this bill because we want to defend the American way of life. The way to do that is to restore some of the civil liberties taken away during the panic after 9/11.

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Freedom in America does not mean granting the government unlimited and unchecked powers to snoop into private lives without any counterbalance. Yet 4 years ago, we were presented with a massive bill in the middle of the night. Fear governed and government suspended basic American freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. A sunset provision was the only thing that kept our American way of life from sunsetting.

Today we need to reclaim liberty and freedom and rename this act the Act of Patriotism. We can defend liberty without destroying freedom. We can make America safer without making America afraid. We can shoulder the burden of security without falling under the yoke of oppression. We cannot and we must not be afraid any longer.

We were afraid not long ago, and it set America on a terrible course where we willingly suspended the rule of law to be governed by the rule of fear: be afraid; be very afraid. And we were. We feared so much that in the PATRIOT Act we embraced national secrecy instead of national security. We granted broad sweeping powers to the government and removed the checks and balances that have made Americans free for 200 years.

At a time like this with the stakes so high, we should look back on history and learn. America has faced grave threats and perilous times before. We did so by defending American values, not by dismantling American principles.

At a time like this we should recall and heed the words expressed by our Founders. The geniuses who envisioned a Nation of free people, free expression and freedom knew that the hard work for America was not in crafting liberty, but in preserving it. What they wrote 200 years ago sounds like it was penned and delivered in this Chamber on this very day. Just listen:

"But a Constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." Those are the words of John Adams in a letter on July 17, 1775.

Another quote: "However weak my country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties." Alexander Hamilton wrote that on December 13, 1790.

And another quote: "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are the only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson was the author in 1781.

You cannot get any advice any better than that written by people who risked torture and death to pursue liberty.

We have our marching orders, and we could not be any clearer. We cannot let fear govern who we are and what we stand for. We cannot let fear become the 28th amendment to the United States Constitution. Yet, that is precisely the grave danger facing America today.

The signs are everywhere. Without your knowledge, investigators can search your home or your office, copy records and photographs. Without your knowledge, the government can look at your medical records as if an x-ray will reveal your political ideology.

Without your knowledge, the government can access your library records and listen to roving wiretaps. And the threshold for all of this is unseen and unknown. A nameless, faceless person somewhere in the government can decide you are suspicious. The color of your skin or the accent of your voice could tip the scales.

They say no. But we do not know. How could we know? Everything is secret.

This climate of fear has produced arrogance which has led to an inevitable abuse of power. So a Republican committee chairman thinks nothing of turning off the microphones as if freedom of speech is governed by an off and on switch, as if liberty and justice for all is controlled by one man banging his gavel.

We have gone too far, and it is time to trade in fear and embrace fearlessness because that is what America is. We have gone too far, and it is time to restrain government because in this country the people rule and history teaches that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We have gone too far, and it is time to stop fear-mongering and start protecting liberty. We do not need to destroy America's founding principles in order to defeat America's latest enemy. Do not let fear rule America and distort it into a country we do not even recognize.

Four years ago we put sunset provisions in the PATRIOT Act. It is time to put them back in and restore the checks and balances that keep America free.