IN DEFENSE OF ACTIONS TAKEN IN IRAQ AND TEACHING AN APPRECIATION FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION (House of Representatives - March 2, 2004) [Page: H738]    The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the comments that preceded me in the Special Order that dealt with our involvement in Iraq, certain thoughts came to mind that I think I would like to present this evening prior to getting involved with the issue of primary importance right now, or, I should say, not primary importance, but the issue I had intended to bring forward. I will do that, but I will do it subsequent to the thoughts I have had listening to our loyal opposition. We have heard for approximately an hour that there were a number of things wrong with the intelligence reports that we received; that there are problems that we now face in trying to pacify Iraq; and that as a result of these things, there should be investigations. And a lot of people's integrity has been called into question, not the least of which the President of the United States. [Time: 20:45] There are many issues that I disagree with the President on, and I have not been hesitant to express my opinions when I do disagree. But on this issue of Iraq, let me just present a few ideas that may I hope stimulate some thinking about whether or not we were right to do what we did in Iraq. I would ask, Mr. Speaker, for all of us to think about what pundits and political opponents would have said if in some time between, say, 1933, when Hitler took power in Germany, and 1939, when finally the world decided to go to war against Hitler, or at least a good portion of the world decided to go to war, what if at any point in time between 1933 and 1939 the United States and Great Britain and as many other countries as would join us would have taken a very, very bold action? And that action would have been preemptive. It would have been before any sort of aggressive action had been taken by Germany and by Hitler against the West, against the Allies, before Poland had been invaded, even before Czechoslovakia. Could we imagine what would have happened on this floor and throughout the world, really, in terms of the reaction, if America and a group of nations had taken preemptive action and stopped Hitler, if we had gone into Germany, if we had deposed Hitler and attempted to bring about a different and truly democratic regime? Well, certainly there would have been an awful lot of second guessing. Certainly there would have been people here on the floor of the House talking about the fact that we really do not know for sure whether V-1 and V-2 rockets were being developed. Maybe the hard evidence would not have been available at the time. And so where were we? Why were we doing such things and was it not against all rules of engagement, was it not something that we should be challenging our administration for and saying you did the wrong thing? We did not have all of the very specific information that we needed to make this decision. Could it be that we would have been questioning whether or not Hitler's intention would have been to, in fact, bring about the "final solution" for the Jews in the world? All these things would have been speculative, certainly. We could not have perhaps proven that that was his intent. We would have been perhaps without all of the hard evidence to bring in front of the world body to prove that the decision we made to preemptively act was right. But if we had done so, just think about what would have been the outcome of that decision and that action. Fifty million people, 50 million people died as a result of our unwillingness to take action. National treasure, untold national treasure had to be expended; and, of course, hundreds of thousands of American lives were lost to try and stop him and stop the Axis powers after they made their intentions perfectly clear. Now, I think that there is a lesson to be learned here, and it is that at some point in time it is imperative that the civilized world take action and, in fact, take preemptive action to try to prevent an occurrence similar to World War II. If we could have done that now, knowing what was the outcome of World War II, knowing what it took to actually stop him when we chose to finally get involved, who would suggest that we should not have taken preemptive action? Does anyone really believe that we should have waited knowing now what we know? Does anybody believe that we should have waited for Hitler and the Japanese empire to strike first? Well, we did. That is history. And we know the outcome. So I will suggest to the body that there was a great deal of evidence presented not just to the United States but to many other countries and many other intelligence networks around the world that would lead us to believe that there was a problem in the making in Iraq. No one, not a single person has ever denied the fact that Iraq was in the process of developing nuclear weaponry and weapons of mass destruction; and, of course, we knew that they had used similar weapons in the past. So that was not a question. The question is would he have, would Saddam Hussein have actually used those weapons had he gotten ahold of them? How long would it have taken for Iraq to actually obtain those weapons? Those are questions we do not know the answer to right now, but we can be fairly sure by all of the empirical evidence that we have in front of us that they have would have developed the weapons and that either he would have used them or think of this, what if, what if those weapons became disposable to the two sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay? Does anybody really believe that they would like to live in a world where those two guys would have the ability to push the button? Well, now they are gone. Saddam is in custody. Uday and Qusay are history. So now we can stand on the floor of the House and we can get on all of the talk shows and say we really did not have all of that to worry about. It really was not worth the expenditure of our resources, both human and financial. Well, maybe not. But I have to say that from everything we know about history and from everything that we know, absolutely, unequivocally know, not the if's, not the "I wonder if," but what we know about the regime in Iraq would lead us to believe that the action we took eventually would end up saving a lot of lives. Not only that, but we are now engaged in a very difficult process and that is to impose democracy, to plant the seeds of democracy in an area of the world in which, of course, it is a very alien idea. And the task is incredible, it is true, but think of the task we have faced when we chose to rebuild Germany and Japan and to rebuild those countries on democratic models. In Japan, of course, where it had never ever existed before, and in Germany, where it had been bastardized, the concept of democracy. We undertook that huge, monumental task; and people could have said in 1946, 1947, 1948, look at the problems we are facing. How come we have not been able to construct these democratic models over there by now? Why are American troops still occupying Germany and Japan? Why are our people still at risk? Why are we spending hundreds of millions of dollars which would equate in today's terms to hundreds of billions of dollars in the rebuilding of both Japan and Germany? Why are we doing it? They would have been there and they may have been here on the floor saying those things at that time. I know that is true. I am not saying they are not legitimate questions and that they should not be raised. All I am saying to you is that we have history on our side. We know what happens when you do not undertake the task, and we know what happens when you do in fact persevere, when you say we are going to rebuild these countries, it is going to take a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of effort because they are not used to this concept; but did it work out to the benefit of humanity that we did what we did? Of course it did. Who argues that we should not have rebuilt Western Europe and even Japan? They became prosperous. They became willing to accept the ideas and ideals of Western civilization, which will get me into my next area of discussion here. But we faced all of these things. We did it. We persevered. In terms of the time frame that has expired between the ending of major hostility to today, it is a blink of the eye. Think how long it took for the United States of America to perfect this concept of a republic based on democratic ideals. It did not happen overnight. You may recall at the end of our revolution many people went to George Washington with a council, figuratively speaking, a council and said, We want you to be king. And, of course, Washington refused and said that is not why we fought a war against a king. That is not the kind of government we were going to establish. Even then, of course, we did not warm to this concept of a republic very quickly. The Articles of Confederation were problematic. There were things in them that did not actually address all of the problems that we had in this country trying to pull it together. Just as today we are watching Iraq in this process, and we are saying, gee, whiz, even their constitution, or the lead up to the constitution, even what we have developed in Iraq today is problematic because we still do not know whether or not exactly what the role of religion will be in Iraq. Well, you may recall that we did not know exactly what the role of slavery would be in the United States and we refused to address it in the Constitutional Convention because we could not come to an agreement. So we put it off and, admittedly, it led to a lot of violence. But the issue was settled. The republic remained and we now still present to the world the best possible hope for stable government and for peace. But it did not come easily. It did not happen when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Lots of things, even bloodshed followed the surrender of the British. Peace will not come easily in Iraq. Democracy will not come easily in Iraq. Many trials and tribulations lay ahead, much bloodshed, certainly true. Should we abandon it because there are these obstacles? Shall we walk away because the challenge is very, very difficult? Well, that is the proposition that is put before us. And I suggest to you that planting democracy and the concept of a republic in a part of the world where it had not heretofore existed is a worthy endeavor. [Time: 21:00] I also suggest to my colleagues that our efforts in Iraq up to this time can be described as noble. This is an interesting situation that we are in; and this develops into another discussion that I want to have tonight, and that is the value of Western Civilization and what it really means, because tomorrow I am going to introduce a resolution, and I am joined by many of my colleagues, and the resolution is a simple one. It says that this body, the Congress of the United States, believes that all children graduating from schools in this country should be able to articulate an appreciation for Western Civilization; and it may seem to some at first to be a heavy topic, some amorphous idea, and one might wonder what are its practical implications and why I would be doing that, as I say, and I and my colleagues would be doing this. I think in a way it is ironic that we are desperately attempting to implant concepts of Western Civilization in a place called Iraq while we, in this country, challenge their relevance in our schools and in our textbooks and certainly in the media in our culture. I believe that we are in a war that can be described as a clash of civilizations. There is a great book by an author by the name of Samuel Huntington called the "Clash of Civilizations," and I remember reading this book, I do not know, maybe 8 years ago and thinking that it was interesting; but I remember going back and reading it again after 9/11 and thinking that it was profound and prophetic. I believe the United States is in a clash and Western Civilization is in a clash of civilizations. It is a real clash, if you will, a real war. It is bloody. There are times when the clash becomes even more violent and times when it subsides, but the clash is real and it will be here for some time. The clash is with radical Islam. It is with people who have said openly and repeatedly that their desire is to come here and kill you and your children, me and my children, to eradicate us from the planet. There is an interesting diary, I do not know whether it was on Al Jazeera, but it was published some time ago, and it is a diary of a person who became a suicide bomber. He talks about in this diary why he has to do what he believes he has to do. He says that the ultimate threat to his view of Islam is the West, is the concept of a republic, a democratic republic. He said that this is a threat to the heart; this is a threat to the existence of Islam as he saw it because what the West provided, through democratic principles and free enterprise, was the good life essentially, what it sort of boils down to. It provided the good life. People could achieve more and more; and, yes, they could achieve in monetary ways, but they could also achieve even from the standpoint of advancing oneself and one's self-esteem, and this he said would turn people away from looking to the afterlife as the ultimate goal or as the ultimate glory. I can tell my colleagues that certainly there are aspects of Judeo-Christian tenets that tell us also that it is what comes next that is important, but Western Civilization has allowed us many things. It has provided a system and a set of ideas and ideals that have served humanity well; and, yes, those ideas and ideals are a threat to other ideas; and, therefore, a clash occurs. How do we fight this war? How do we deal with this clash? Well, of course, it will require the force of arms at times, and it will require the commitment of resources, and it will require something else. It will require a belief in who we are, which by the way is the title of Samuel Huntington's new book, which I certainly commend to everyone, "Who We Are." We have to know the answer to that question. We have to know who we are. We have to understand that this Nation uniquely was created on the basis of ideas and ideals, all other nations formed for other reasons, but ours started for a brand new reason, ideas. Those ideas were held up to the world, and people came from all over the world to embrace them. Uniquely, we said this old concept that people should be ruled by individuals is not acceptable; it has not worked out well and it does not accrue to the benefit of most human beings. So Western Civilization was based upon a different idea, and it is called the rule of law, not the rule of man, not one person making arbitrary decisions about everything that affects our lives, but the law making those decisions as developed by people who represent all of us, a brand new concept that we put into effect and that I think serves the world well. Western Civilization was based on other ideals, the ideal of the individual being superior to that of the collective; the idea that humans had inalienable rights. This is a Western concept. No place else does it show its face but in Western Civilization. Today, in America, however, there is a movement, a philosophy, I call it radical multiculturalism. It has taken hold of our society. It is seeping its way into our public schools and on to our college campuses. This philosophy may be peculiar to most Americans; but it does seem to be taking hold among elites, academics, the media, and certain groups within the political establishment. It is a corrosive movement, and its purveyors are threatening to accomplish in the classrooms what they could not get through elections: one, to erase the notion of citizenship; and, two, to teach young people that there is nothing positive or unique about America and that Western Civilization contributed nothing to world history but imperialism, slavery, and discord. Let me emphasize something here. I do not for a moment want to tell the children of America, the citizens of America or the world that we believe that we have never done anything wrong and that Western Civilization is nothing but a set of ideas and principles that have been put into place without problem. Many of those ideals are not yet reached, by the way. So I am totally and completely supportive of the thought that we have to teach our children the truth about who we are, the truth, warts and all; but I have to tell my colleagues I am becoming extremely concerned, as I think many others are, about the fact that we concentrate so much of our effort and time on teaching children and immigrants into this country that there is nothing good about Western Civilization or about the United States as a representation of that civilization. These are some examples that we have taken, by no means exhaustive. These are just tiny little snippets of some of the things we tell our children in textbooks and some of the things that, in fact, teachers and professors have told our children about America, about the West, all in an attempt to essentially eliminate any concept that there is something good and special about us and who we are, and I will go through them in a minute. I just want to tell my colleagues about something that happened to me just a short time ago. I was visiting a high school in my district, and there were probably 150 to 200 students who came into the auditorium to have a discussion with me; and it went on for, as I say, about 60 minutes or so, and at the end, some students were sending up written questions. One of them said, What do you think is the most serious problem facing the country? I said, well, I am going to answer that question with a question, if you do not mind, and that is this, How many people in here believe that we live in the greatest Nation on the Earth or as Michael Medved always says, on God's green Earth? And I looked around. It was fascinating to see what happened out there. This was a suburban district in Douglas County, Colorado, middle- to higher-income families in the area, predominantly white. If one looked up suburbs in the dictionary, probably a picture of this particular area, and when I asked the question how many of you believe that you live in the best country in the world, about two dozen raised their hands, most of them very sheepishly I should say, and the rest just sat there. Some looked uncomfortable, and I must admit that I thought to myself at the time that some of them looked like they actually wanted to say yes, but they were afraid to. They looked at the teachers who were lined up on the sides of the walls. They were kind of looking at them like, gee, should I actually say this, and more than that I think that they were thinking, if I say yes, if I say yes I believe I live in the best country in the world, someone might challenge me, maybe even he will, and would I be able to defend that principle. These are high school students; and I said, well, let me ask you about do you realize that we are a product of Western Civilization and that how many of you would agree that this is something again about which you can be proud? Maybe a dozen at that one, and I said, well, this is what I consider to be one of the biggest problems facing America, what is happening to you and what has happened to you as a result of this multiculturalist philosophy that we push in the schools. [Time: 21:15] This idea that all cultures are at worst the same; at best they are better than ours; and that we cannot make these kinds of statements about what is better or best, about which country is better or best, which civilization is better. Now, that happened, and I know it is not unique to this little typical suburban school in my district. I could have asked that question in any high school in America and the response would have been similar; tepid, sheepish support, with most people saying, I do not know, I do not care, and what does it matter? I wonder how this could have happened. How is it that people living here in this country, at this time, can look at the rest of the world and not recognize that every single day millions of people are struggling to get here, if not to America at least to Western Europe; that they are struggling to get to Western civilization? And I have to ask, how many people do you know that are struggling to go the other way? Is that not empirical evidence of some sort that what we have is pretty good; that it is worthy of our allegiance, worthy of continuing? People ask me why I am so involved with the immigration issue; why I speak on that issue so often. Well, there are a whole bunch of reasons, and they deal with jobs and the environment, and the cost, and all that sort of thing. But after all of that is said and done, I worry about this. I worry about the fact that we are not doing a very good job of creating a society, a cohesive, homogenous society out of all of the disparate parts that make up America. I worry that we are working very hard to divide us, to divide this Nation into camps; into Balkanized areas that are based on linguistic, cultural, or political differences while simultaneously trying to erase anything that smacks of an attempt to bring people together around a set of ideas other than the concept of diversity, which is the only thing that multiculturalists will say is worthy of our allegiance. I worry about what will happen to us in this clash of civilizations when it is not only the force of arms necessary to win the day but it is the force of ideas. For us to be successful as a people, as a civilization, as a country we have to know who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. We have to believe in who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. And I worry that too few of us know who we are, where we came from or where we are going, and that this in the long run will prove to be our undoing. So that is why I talk about immigration, and that is why I talk about issues like this. That is why I worry about the fact that in the textbook called Across the Centuries, which is used for 7th grade history, the book defines the word jihad as "To do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." Now, maybe that is somebody's interpretation of jihad. But, remember, this was not even suggested as someone's idea, this is presented as the interpretation, the definition of jihad: "To do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." I guess we would not want to tell children, would we, that that word implied something quite different? It is a call to arms to those people who believe we should be annihilated, and everything we believe in should be wiped out because it is a threat to fundamentalist Islam. Well, we need to say it, because it is true. We may not like it, we may feel uncomfortable by telling children the truth, but it is imperative that we do so. That is not the only definition of jihad. In 2002, the New Guidelines for Teaching History in New Jersey's public schools failed to even mention America's Founding Fathers, the pilgrims, or the Mayflower. How do you tell the history of the United States, I might ask, without mentioning the Founding Fathers, the pilgrims, or the Mayflower? Maybe it is a good thing that the book did not, because in many textbooks, and certainly out of the mouths of many teachers, the mentioning of these people would be in derogatory terms. The Founding Fathers, all white men, who were slave owners, who came here to pillage and rape and whatever. Columbus came here to destroy paradise. I have seen that. So maybe it was better that they did not mention it. Do you think at least some reference to the ideas and ideals upon which this Nation was founded should have been made, and the fact that people struggled and died to bring those ideals into fruition? Do you think that was worthy of mentioning? In a Prentice Hall textbook used by students in Palm Beach County High Schools, titled A World Conflict, the first five pages of the World War II chapter focused almost entirely on topics such as gender roles in the armed forces, racial segregation in the war, internment camps, and women and the war effort. Do you think I make this stuff up? You can go and look, if you do not believe me, that this is in fact being taught to our children. This is in the textbooks of the schools in this Nation. By the way, Madam Speaker, if anyone were to be so inclined, they can go to our Web site, www.House.Gov/Tancredo and they can click on a pop-up that says Our Heritage, Our Hope, and they can see what I am talking about here, and they can also sign up to help us in this endeavor to change the situation. And I have some very specific things I would like them to do. A Washington State teacher substituted the word "winter" for the word "Christmas" in a carol to be sung at school programs so as not to appear to be favoring one faith over the other. The lyrics in Dale Wood's carol From an Irish Cabin were changed to read "the harsh wind blows down from the mountains and blows a white winter to me." Not "Christmas." I was in a school, again in my district, again a typical public school, and it was right before Christmas. I was talking to a lot of, I think they were in grades 5 and 6 in an elementary school. When I left the room, I said Merry Christmas. Again, there was this kind of an uneasy response, and some kids said okay. And as I was walking out the lady who had invited us to come and speak, who was an aide at the school, said, you know, the principal does not like us using the word "Christmas" here. I said what is that, as I pointed to a Christmas tree in the hallway? And she said, that is a seasonal tree. And I said, are you telling me that we cannot use "Christmas"? And she said, no, the teachers do not. So I went back and I yelled, as I was leaving and all the kids were coming out, I said, Merry Christmas, and they all said, Merry Christmas. But this is happening, of course, in schools all over the United States. I bet if people go to their own schools and check these things out, they will see what I am saying is not just unique to my little suburban district in Colorado. In a school district in New Mexico the introduction to a textbook called 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures states that it was written "In response to the bicentennial celebration of the 1776 American Revolution and its lies. Its stated purpose is to "celebrate our resistance to being colonized and absorbed by racist empire builders." The book describes defenders of the Alamo as "slave owners, land speculators, and Indian killers," Dave Crockett as a cannibal, and the 1857 "War on Mexico" as an unprovoked U.S. invasion. The chapter headings include, Death to the Invader, U.S. Conquest and Betrayal, We Are Now a U.S. Colony, In Occupied America, and They Stole the Land. Now, again, I certainly do not say that mistakes were not made, that manifest destiny as an idea and an ideal did not have inherent in it problems for other people. I certainly believe that is true, and I believe we should teach our children about those problems. But this is what we call objective history text? I am going to repeat it. This book, it said, was written "in response to the bicentennial celebration of the 1776 American Revolution and its lies." Its stated purpose is to "celebrate our resistance to being colonized and absorbed by a racist empire builder." Children are often taught only the most negative things about the United States and about Western civilization. And if these efforts go unchecked, children will lose any real connection to the goals and aspirations and ideals of America and the West, the ideals exemplified in the Constitution and articulated by the people who founded the country over 200 years ago. If we fail to instill these values in our children, we risk losing our national identity. It is not surprising to me that a brand new phenomenon is developing in the United States with regard to the immigrant community. Since about 1947, the United States has allowed people to claim a dual citizenship. Most of this happened in 1947 as a result of the creation of the State of Israel, and to provide Israelis here with the opportunity to travel back and forth and to state their allegiance to Israel by accepting a dual citizenship. But we never had very many people, to tell you the truth, that actually accepted that offer. It numbered in the hundreds of thousands, at the most, at any given time in America. Today estimates are that there are between, we do not know for sure, 5 and 10 million people in this country who claim a dual citizenship, mostly with Mexico, after Mexico allowed Mexican nationals to keep their citizenship once they came to the United States. This happened a couple of years ago, and the number skyrocketed. When we tell people that they should keep their political associations, political allegiances to other countries, that they should keep their language of origin, that they should not actually blend into this American mosaic, should we be surprised by the fact that they do not? [Time: 21:30] McDougal's "The Americas," another textbook, states that the Reagan-Bush conservative agenda limits advances in civil rights for minorities. Again, these are statements of fact by a textbook, not somebody's opinion, and that the conservatives' bid to dismantle the Great Society's social programs could be compared to abandoning the Nation. It goes on to include a text stating that Communism had potentially totalitarian underpinnings, and contrasts future Taiwan President Chiang Kai-Shek's repressive rule with Communist Chinese Dictator Mao Zedong's benevolence toward peasants in the early 1940s. Now, if we did not know anything else and read this, why would you not believe it to be true? If the book and your teacher failed to mention the deaths of about 65 million Chinese after Mao came to power in 1949 or Taiwan's peaceful transformation into a thriving, pluralistic multiparty democracy, no one would know this. They would never understand it. They would never truly understand world history. Would we be lying to tell children this was the case? Would it be chauvinistic of us to suggest that it was not just the possibility of some totalitarian underpinnings, but a totalitarian regime, and that Communism could only survive out of terror. Is it not acceptable for us to tell the truth? That is what I wonder. Why are we so fearful about telling children about who we are really, all of the warts but all of the good things, too. Here is a study by Philip Sadler, director of science education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which shows that students who had taken high school physics classes that used textbooks did substantially worse than high school classrooms that used no textbooks at all. I would suggest that if these other textbooks, these history textbooks are an example of what we are doing, it would be better to not use them at all. Madam Speaker, tomorrow I am going to ask this Congress to pass a simple resolution, and that resolution will state, as I said, that all children graduating from our schools should be able to articulate an appreciation for Western civilization. That is it. No mandate, no textbook mandates, no curriculum change, just whatever you do, this should be an outcome. Simultaneously we are going to be joined by State representatives all over the country who will be introducing into their representative legislatures a similar resolution, and we are going to be joined by hundreds of Americans, and this is where other people can get involved because we are going to be joined by I hope eventually hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of American citizens who will go to their school board with a resolution that we have on that Website that I mentioned earlier, www.house.gov/trancredo, and go to Our Heritage, Our Hope, and there you will see a copy of a resolution that a person could take to their school board and ask their school board to adopt. Now, the NEA, the National Education Association, has already attacked this proposal. And I keep thinking to myself, what is there about this? And not just the NEA. Tomorrow is when we are going to actually drop this resolution and announce it, but we have had all kinds of people responding saying that in fact this is a bad idea. Now, please, let us really think about this for a second. They are saying it is a bad idea to teach children facts so that they could articulate an appreciation for Western civilization. I mean, is that not the definition of what would be a good history education, a good civics education? Should children not be able to articulate those principles? We can argue whether they are right or wrong, but we should be able to have children who can articulate them, understand who we are, where we come from and where we are going. I know that this is a stretch for a lot of people. It is hard for a lot of people to get their hands on this because it is not an issue that you can condense into a bumper sticker, but I encourage people to think through this and think about the possibility that it is important for us and for our civilization to actually transmit these goals and ideas to the next generation. We cannot continue to teach only the negative. Doing so contributes to the balkanization of the United States into subgroups, subcategories, and hyphenated Americans. In Numbers U.S.A., an organization that does a lot of great work and also has a great Website, Numbers U.S.A. talks about the fact that if we continue as we are in terms of population growth and the source of our population growth in this country, being 90 percent from immigrants, that by the year 2100 two-thirds of the people here in the United States will be descendants of people not yet here at the present time. Think about that. In 96 years, two-thirds of the people living in this country will be descendants of people not yet here. Think about that and then think about what we are teaching them, the folks that are coming in and the folks that are here about who we are. How can we expect this new Nation essentially that will be created by 2100 to be steeped in the same goals and principles and ideas? Again, Madam Speaker, I hope that we will be joined by hundreds of thousands of Americans all over the country who will be willing to say that it is important for their schools, it is important for our civilization that we teach children to appreciate the value of Western civilization and there is something we all can do about it. I am going to do what I can do here, State legislators will do what they can do in their respective bodies, and then it is up to the people of this country to take this on and move it forward. It will determine whether we are a Nation at all in years to come. END