Mr. Speaker, this July 4 we celebrated our 245th anniversary as a nation, and we, indeed, have a lot to celebrate. Margaret Thatcher once observed that while Europe was created by history, America was created by philosophy. To Thatcher's…
Mr. Speaker, this July 4 we celebrated our 245th anniversary as a nation, and we, indeed, have a lot to celebrate.
Margaret Thatcher once observed that while Europe was created by history, America was created by philosophy. To Thatcher's point, the United States is unique in history in that we are founded on the principle that we are all created equal and that our inalienable rights are not a grant from government, but they are endowed to us by God; and that a just form of government derives its power from the consent of the governed.
These founding principles have made us a city on a hill and an example of freedom and liberty to the world. We truly hold a special place in history.
Like every nation in history, we have had our challenges and we have made our mistakes. But we have introduced into humanity the model of a nation not defined by our government but by ``We the People.''
With each generation we have perfected our understanding of what it means to realize that truth that all of us are created equal and that we are always working toward that more perfect union.
A young nation in the scope of history, we stepped onto the world stage with unmatched confidence. Knowing that our cause was just, we pushed back against the designs of those intent on world domination, Marxism and its authoritarian expression of communism and socialism, emerging victorious after World War II.
When most nations throughout history would have required tribute, we instead offered the world the opportunity for partnership and peace, a world where trade among nations, even those nations that would oppose us, would be protected by U.S. strength.
In this conflict and others since, we have sought friendship, not lordship with former foes, working often at our expense to build other nations.
Free of political shackles, our scientists have brought the world innovation that has improved people's lives. From the availability of electricity and energy, automobiles and airplanes, our advancements in medicine have saved lives the world over and improved the quality of life for millions.
We have reached for the stars, sharing our newfound mysteries of our universe with our planet's co-inhabitants, and with America's rise, humanity has benefited. Here, for example, we see the life expectancy during what we have come to know as the American century, has almost doubled, actually over doubled.
While there is still work to be done, we can see that global abject poverty has declined dramatically during this time. And while there is legitimate debate about our involvement in global conflicts, in the broader scope of history and humanity, we have overseen a period of relative peace.
As you can see, our growth in military strength has corresponded with historic lows in conflict fatalities during what historians have called the Pax Americana.
Indeed, for so many of us who are the recipients of these blessings, it could seem like these hard-earned, relative peace, and prosperity we enjoy as Americans and have shared with the world are guaranteed to us and that they will automatically endure for generations to come. To assume this would be a grave, arrogant, and costly miscalculation.
Ronald Reagan once said that:
``Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.''
We would be wise to reflect on history and take stock of this moment and see if there is, indeed, anything we can learn from history. It is notable that the average lifespan of superpowers throughout history is just around 240 to 250 years, and as I mentioned at the outset, this July Fourth the United States celebrated our 245th anniversary.
History would also tell us that there are fundamental reasons for the rise and fall of great nations. Historian and philosopher Will Durant wrote in his 11-volume work titled, ``The Story of Civilization'' that, ``A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.''
According to British historian and international relations scholar Paul Kennedy:
Former great powers typically exhibit the same factors. . .
. an overextension of the military and foreign liabilities,
economic decline of important manufacturing and agricultural
sectors, and fiscal irresponsibility.
Does this sound familiar to us in this Chamber? But history also reveals to us that is there a cycle to the rise and fall of a great nation, a pattern, if you will, that typically the global power structure goes from a multipolar to a bipolar to a unipolar nation.
Most recently we saw this coming out of World War II. Going into World War II, the world consisted of multiple great powers, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Russia struggling for preeminence. After the war, we moved to a bipolar world with the United States and the Soviet Union being the dominant forces.
Then in 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, resulting in the United States as the unipolar power fully ushering in what we now know as Pax Americana.
Now, a multipolar world is not a great place to be. Historically, multipolar worlds have been much less stable. Commerce, freedom, travel, and navigation for people are hampered. Human flourishing is stifled as resources are devoted to global struggles instead of innovations and improvements in the quality of life like hospitals, schools, and research.
In spite of this, it should not surprise us that there are powers across our globe that take issue with America's strong influence; that there are nations that would like to restructure the balance of power to diminish American influence and push us into a multipolar world. Indeed, this has been something that Iran has talked about for decades, and they have been vocal in their desires and efforts to diminish U.S. influence and usher in a multipolar world.
In Moscow on April 23, 1997, China and Russia signed the ``Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order'' which states that: ``The parties shall strive to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order.''
These nations have something in common. They have sought to consolidate and maintain their power, not through the guaranteeing of freedom for their people, but, rather, through authoritarian rule over them.
As Americans, and certainly as policymakers, we would be gravely mistaken to recognize as morally equivalent governing systems that seek to promote, protect, and preserve human liberty with these authoritarian systems that survived through the contraction of these human liberties.
And while I may not agree with another nation's efforts to move us toward a multipolar world, I certainly can understand them. I can understand their aspirations to diminish the United States' influence and supplant it with their own. I can understand that they would strive to take the United States' wealth and power for themselves. But what would be shocking to most Americans, though, is to find that in addition to adversarial nations, there are sources within our government that have been advocating for and working toward this multipolar objective for decades.
They work to distort the American system, to gather wealth and power from the sweat, blood, and tears of hardworking, taxpaying Americans. Generations of freedom-loving Americans, both in and out of uniform, have given their best under the assumption that this government had their best interests in mind.
In 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council released this report: ``Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.''
In this report, the United States National Intelligence Council declares:
``The unprecedented shift in relative wealth and economic power roughly from West to East now under way will continue.
``The United States' relative strength--even in the military realm-- will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained.''
They went on to explain the major causes for this. They said:
``In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way--roughly from West to East--is without precedent in modern history. This shift derives from two sources. First, increases in oil and commodity prices have generated windfall profits for the Gulf states and Russia. Second, lower costs combined with government policies have shifted the locus of manufacturing and some service industries to Asia.''
So they said there are two major trends causing this massive shift in wealth from the American people to authoritarian regimes overseas; to summarize: ceding our oil and gas industry overseas and shifting domestic manufacturing overseas.
Now, if the report were simply an honest look at trends--perhaps even a warning to us--I could appreciate that evaluation. But instead of making the necessary adjustments to counter this trend, our bureaucrats in D.C. embraced it and sought to help, aid in this fleecing of American wealth and transition toward a multipolar world.
As a matter of fact, the report called this transition ``one of the world's relative certainties.'' The report, however, based these conclusions on assumptions that we now know are false or, at best, incomplete.
As a matter of fact, the Trump administration showed us just how quickly these assumptions could be upended as: The United States in a matter of months went from an energy dependent to an energy dominant Nation; and policy changes were put in place that began to encourage rather than discourage companies to return to the U.S. soil, including manufacturing.
Yet, those in entrenched places of power in our government continue to endorse this transition as inevitable and look down on those who don't embrace this worldview of the sunset of America's greatness as being inevitable.
As a matter of fact, on July 22, 2009, in a speech given in the Ukraine then Vice President Joe Biden said of the Obama-Biden administration, ``We are trying to build a multipolar world. . . .''
We are trying to build a multipolar world. The Biden administration continues that effort in earnest today and they are doing it in a couple of different ways. They are earnestly at work to both prop up competing powers and also working to diminish American strength.
Suddenly, as we consider more recent history, what has seemed like a series of policy missteps and blunders begins to make sense. We can now understand the stifling of energy production here at home while encouraging that same energy production overseas with far less environmental standards abroad; the tax and economic policies that drive American businesses and jobs overseas; the sending of billions of dollars in foreign aid to prop up corrupt powers overseas.
We can think about Afghanistan, and the withdrawal debacle, and the leaving of billions of dollars of our best technology overseas, and the policies that discourage the American worker and stifle economic growth seem less like a tragic miscalculation and more like a plan.
All of these factors contribute to this march toward multipolarism, that unprecedented transfer of economic power, wealth, and influence from the American people to competing adversarial regimes. Shall we call that a fleecing of the American people?
In this time of turmoil in our Nation, the lurching from crisis to crisis, the American people have become disillusioned with ``leadership'' from Washington, D.C. They have watched the fruit of their best efforts squandered away. They have watched their sons and daughters sent to fight endless wars with obscure objectives. Trillions have been spent by politicians with very few actual problems solved.
The globalists in our government have been selling away our Nation's treasure, the treasure that our parents, our grandparents, and their grandparents worked hard and fought for.
This has become the real divide in our Federal Government. The contrast between a multipolar, globalist worldview that wishes to shame us out of our Nation's strength and send America into her sunset years, or a world that believes that what is precious and right in America is worth preserving, and that we should aspire to be that moral beacon of liberty for the world to see: that city on a hill.
Here is the good news. Never has a nation been so blessed with abundant natural resources, access to the Earth's great oceans, a river system that waters our fertile grounds and facilitates commerce both in our Nation and to the world.
We have a people who, unshackled by the burden of an overreaching government, stand ready to do their best work; to apply themselves to the next generation of innovation and invention, of scholarship and learning; ready to develop the next generation of cures; to provide affordable food and fuel for our neighbors here at home and abroad; and, yes, also to stand ready to respond when those intent on tyranny, destruction, and world domination rear their ugly heads.
The answer for our Nation and, indeed, for the world, is not the dismantling of the American system. It is not the embrace of socialist, progressive policies that have failed time and time again, leaving in its wake the shattered dreams and lives of millions.
It is not an America ducking its head in shame and retreating from its place of leadership. Rather, it is to embrace what has made America great in the first place. It is in a renewal of the American promise. It is in a return to our shared foundational values, albeit practiced more perfectly.
It is in an embrace in our hearts and minds as Americans that we the people are what defines us as a nation; that we are one Nation under God with liberty and justice for all.
This is the great work that lies before us as Americans, for those of us who serve in this Chamber, and to those for whom we represent. May our efforts be noble and just, and may God shed His grace on us.
I yield back the balance of my time.