Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to speak on a subject that I have spoken on many, many times over the course of my career in this Congress. This will be the last time I will be able to address this body in a Special Order on this…
Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to speak on a subject that I have spoken on many, many times over the course of my career in this Congress. This will be the last time I will be able to address this body in a Special Order on this particular issue.
I am reminded of nearly a decade ago when I arrived in the House of Representatives in 1999 and there was really no organized effort to facilitate a discussion on the critical issue of immigration and immigration reform. The task I felt at that time was to bring it to the Nation's attention any way I could, being one Member of the House and as a freshman, there are relatively few ways to accomplish that goal. One way was to address the House through the Special Order process, and I did that night after night after night.
I would sometimes walk away from here thinking it may have been a futile gesture. I would leave here and it would be quite late walking across to my office in Longworth, and I would look back at the Capitol dome and I would see the light shining on it and I would think about the importance of what I was trying to accomplish here. And at my office, there were always lights on the phones, I could see people calling and hear the fax machine going, and I knew there were people out there who were listening to this discussion and who were responding to it and that always gave me the energy to continue the discussion, to come back the next night and do whatever I could to get people to focus on what I considered to be and what I still consider to be one of the most serious problems facing the Nation. Certainly it is one of the most serious domestic problems facing the Nation.
Now we are talking about a financial crisis and it has sucked up all of the energy in the room and all of the energy on Capitol Hill. All of the oxygen has been sucked up by this discussion, and I understand why. It is a crucial issue, crucial to our constituents and enormously important throughout the world, as a matter of fact.
It is important I think also to recognize there is an aspect of this discussion which does go back to the original issue of illegal immigration into the country, and it is no small part of the problem that we now face.
Several months ago in my own county, Jefferson County, Colorado, the district attorney indicted several realtors and mortgage brokers for fraudulently developing documents for people who were here illegally so they could buy homes. By the way, it is not necessarily illegal in the United States, as peculiar as this may sound, it is not illegal for someone who is here illegally to purchase a home, but it is certainly illegal to doctor the documents, to falsify the Social Security and tax records. Now this is a tiny story. How does it relate to this issue.
One county in Colorado, three or four realtors, three or four mortgage brokers, accounted for 250 homes being sold in just that county in Colorado. Across the Nation, this phenomenon accounts for hundreds of thousands of homes that have been sold to people who are here illegally. There have been major industries, certainly major banks in this country that were devoted to trying to identify illegal aliens as a niche market to both make them loans, to identify them as potential bank customers so they can get the mortgage.
We saw hundreds of millions, in fact hundreds of billions of dollars flow into these mortgages. Now what has happened? The economy has gone sour. Immigration reform efforts have gotten to the point where we actually are now conducting raids at some of the major factories and meat packing plants across the country. And also States have taken on this responsibility themselves and have passed laws. Because the Federal Government has been so lax, we have States taking up the burden and passing laws to do something about illegal immigration in their State, and local communities doing the same thing.
The result is lots of people are leaving, going home. To the extent so much so that in Mexico, the president of Mexico issued an urgent plea for us to do something to stop the flow of illegal aliens back to Mexico because they couldn't handle it. They wanted us to secure our border, maybe to build a fence. There were so many returning that they could not handle the influx.
What does that mean for us and the issue of this mortgage problem that we are having? It means that all of those people simply walked away from those mortgages, those hundreds of thousands of homes that were on the market. They walked away because of course they had nothing at stake. They were given 100 percent loans, sometimes even more than that. Their names were oftentimes falsified. They had nothing at stake, were illegally in the country, so it was easy to walk away. They walked away from the homes and we are stuck with the mortgages, and they are now part of this huge bailout we are trying to focus on and deal with as the Congress of the United States.
We haven't talked about that as an issue, but I suggest to you it is an enormous issue. No one wants to talk about it, just like no one wanted to talk about this issue for the last 10 years.
Only recently have we seen a bit of a change. In 1999, I founded the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, and six people agreed to join initially. The task I felt again was something that I had to undertake. It was one of those things that I decided to add to the repertoire, if you will, of talking about it here at night, forming an immigration reform caucus and trying to get people to pay attention.
Well, there have been--I don't know--hundreds of speeches, literally thousands of radio spots that I have done and interviews that I have done on this particular issue, thousands of speeches that I have given around the country.
Things have begun to change, and I am extremely happy about that. We certainly have more members of the caucus now headed by Brian Bilbray, over 100 members, both Republicans and Democrats, and a number of things have happened around the country that are worthy of note.
The Minuteman Project showed the Nation how a few hundred concerned citizens could shut down border traffic with lawn chairs and cell phones, just doing what they could do in their spare time as American citizens looking for a lawful way to address the issue of illegal immigration. Thousands of people did it. It was a wonderful thing to observe even though, by our own President, they were called vigilantes, and of course, they were the people who were actually enforcing the law as opposed to the President, who was ignoring it.
We've had governors of southern border States, Democrats and Republicans alike, declare states of emergency in their individual States because of the massive number of illegal immigrants who have come across the borders. We've had small towns, communities all over this country do what Mayor Barletta did in the small town of Hazleton, Pennsylvania when he passed ordinances against hiring or renting to illegal aliens. He earned national attention and a crucial battle with the ACLU for that.
Of course, I mentioned earlier there are other States, States like Arizona, Oklahoma, Georgia, that have taken up this issue themselves because, again, they looked for help from the Federal Government and could not find it, but they have passed wonderful bills to deal with this, saying that employers in their respective States have to use the E-Verify system to make sure that the people they have hired are here legally.
Legislatively, we've seen other things that seemed impossible a while back. In October of 2004, Speaker Hastert's H.R. 10, which came out of the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, was passed in the House, and it substantially targeted immigration-related weaknesses related to terrorist travel.
The following month, I used a rarely employed conference rule to force a Republican Conference meeting and postpone a vote on the Intelligence reform bills because immigration-related provisions had been stripped from the conference report. The shutdown resulted in the promise that became the Real ID Act, which became the law the following year. It mandates standards for the issuance of driver's licenses that would preclude the eligibility of illegal aliens.
In 2006, the Secure Fence Act became law, mandating the construction of approximately 800 miles of fencing and infrastructure on the U.S.- Mexico border. Three hundred miles of that fence have been completed.
The most important tool in forcing Congress to deal with immigration is the amendment process that we have here. In 2003, I began offering amendments to spending bills, seeking to enforce Federal laws that prohibit sanctuary cities. This was a new strategy, and I began to build a record for all of my colleagues. No longer could Members just speak in platitudes about immigration. They had to put their money where their mouths were and cast a vote up or down on these real issues.
I brought amendments on the sanctuary policy's temporary protected status by removing reimbursements for illegal alien health care, by repealing food stamps for immigrants, by suspending the Visa Waiver Program, by revoking visas for countries that refuse reparations.
As the votes began to pile up, the voting habits of my colleagues began to change. The first sanctuary amendment I offered in 2003 got 102 votes. Now we regularly pass these amendments. The real catalyst was President Bush's speech in 2004, which caused widespread outrage with the amnesty proposal. Our constituents showing the vast disconnect between themselves and the beltway elite started making their views known with the benefits of high-paid lobbyists.
Like most Americans, I was delighted to watch the immigration proposal go down to defeat in the U.S. Senate. First and foremost, it demonstrated how widely unpopular the notion of granting amnesty to illegal aliens is with the American people. More importantly, however, Congress' rejection of the bill may have signified the high watermark for advocates of ever increasing levels of immigration, both legal and illegal, into the United States.
Supporters of the President's immigration plan were forced to even change the rhetoric of the debate as they tried desperately to invent a nonoffensive euphemism for amnesty. We heard it referred to as ``earned legalization,'' as ``comprehensive reform'' and
as ``regularization.'' Despite their efforts, however, Americans made it quite clear that they opposed amnesty.
It's not surprising, but the amnesty proposal contained within the bill isn't the only fuel that fueled the grassroots brush fire that killed that bill. Dramatic increases in legal immigration levels proved to be nearly as unpopular as amnesty, and it also contributed to the demise of the legislation.
Public concerns about dramatically increased levels of legal immigration helped to derail a similar Senate proposal in 2006 after Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation analyzed how many foreigners the bill would allow into the United States over the next 20 years, some 60 million people. Sheer numbers began to transcend anecdotal stories about friendly immigrant neighbors on the minds of the American public.
Indeed, the protracted debate over immigration has voters increasingly focused on what is a very reasonable question: What kind of immigration policy serves our national interest? Not surprisingly, few have stepped forward to defend the status quo or the massive increases proposed by the Senate leadership or the President. Mr. Rector penned a report applicable to that year's Senate concoction. Despite all the talk about how critical low-skilled immigrants are to economic growth, his study confirmed what many already knew, that low- skilled legal and illegal immigrants are a net cost to taxpayers, not a net gain, just as their native-born counterparts are.
The Senate bill would have cost our children and grandchildren $2.5 trillion due to amnesty provisions and increased levels of legal immigration authorized by the legislation. Again, it was Mr. Rector's analysis that deeply shook the public's confidence in the Senate's credibility in handling the issue. Once more, the question about legal immigration became relevant in light of that information.
Now, I'm not saying that America is ready to install a ``no vacancy'' sign on the Statue of Liberty. At the same time, we cannot discount the increasingly disconcerting public feeling that honoring our tradition of immigration while decreasing the yearly total of immigrants to more sustainable levels are not mutually exclusive goals. A significant decrease similar to that one in the Commission on Immigration Reform advocated in the mid-1990s would be a good first step toward creating a more orderly and sustainable immigration policy in America, such as, by the way, eliminating chain migration and the visa lottery. I continue to believe that a return to traditional immigration levels as well as stepped up enforcement can be won in a matter of months and years, not decades.
For one reason I believe that this is what will happen in this seminal legislative moment in my House tenure is that Mr. Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, began the process in late 2005 of crafting a comprehensive immigration reform bill--the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. It passed 239 to 182. Not only did the enforcement bill first receive broad bipartisan support on the final passage but so did stand-alone amendments to build border fencing and to reduce legal immigration by eliminating the Visa Diversity program.
Our immigration caucus played a vital role in making sure that not so much as a sense of Congress was allowed to suggest that we needed guest workers.
There is still, of course, much to do. I am proud of the accomplishments of the caucus. I am proud of the accomplishments that my colleagues and I, who have fought for immigration reform, have made to this point in time.
Certainly, it is the reason, by the way, that I ran for the Presidency of the United States, for the Republican nomination for the Presidency of the United States. With little idea, in fact no idea, that I would actually become the President of the United States in that process, I was nonetheless inspired to do what I did and run for the nomination for President in order to force the people who were on the stage with me during that period of time to address this issue. There was a reluctance in doing so. I know I started the process out in February of last year and ended it in December, and between that time that I started in February to December, there was a complete change in the way each person who was running for that nomination addressed the issue of immigration. Finally, every single person, including the present nominee of the party, agreed that we had to secure the borders first. We must do that. There was no longer ambiguity in their statements about this. Our borders have to be secure.
Now, I hope of course that the rhetoric turns into action. I commend to my colleagues here who will be returning next year that their task will be ahead of them to make sure that that is what is done.
So we have done a great many things. There are still a lot of concerns that most of us have about where we go from here. It is imperative that we stay strong in our opposition to amnesty of any kind. It is imperative that we push for a border fence and for one that is, in fact, a real deterrent to the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.
It is imperative that we never, ever do to anybody else what we've done to Agents Ramos and Compean, who are still imprisoned for essentially doing what they were hired to do in protecting our borders.
There are threats to our sovereignty like the Security and Prosperity Partnership and the North American Union. They continue to exist in some form or other. Legal immigration is still at an historical high. The effects of our language and of our culture threaten not only what kind of a nation we will be but whether we will be a nation at all.
This leads me to the next part of this discussion and, perhaps, even to the more serious part that we must begin to work with as we have now accomplished a number of goals that we have set and that I have set, essentially, for myself here, which is one of the reasons why I chose not to run again. I mean, when I look back at where I started in this process and where we are now 10 years later, I feel like I have accomplished many of the goals I set for myself in this body. There are many people here who I can turn to now and hand the baton to and know that they will take it up--it's wonderful--to Judge Poe and to Steve King. I could go on and on with the number of people who are here today who are committed to doing something about true immigration reform. Hence, I feel very comfortable in taking my leave of this place at this time, but I do so with this caveat:
We must never forget the real threat that exists as a result of massive immigration, both legal and illegal, into this country when it merges with what I have often called the cult of multiculturalism. It permeates our society, this cult does. It is an emphasis on all of the things that pull us apart as a society--an emphasis on creating linguistic and cultural enclaves, on turning us into a cultural and linguistic Tower of Babel. It is a focus on all of the negative aspects of Western civilization and the United States' exemplification of Western civilization's greatest attributes.
The colleges and institutions of higher education and certainly even our high schools and our K-12 educational system is fraught with this idea of this cult of multiculturalism and the attitude about America and about the west. It permeates all of the textual materials of most of the professors who are at these institutions, who always confront the issue of America and the west and western society in the most negative terms, who are always tearing us down--who we are, what we've built, what we're all about. This is the cult of multiculturalism. When millions of people come into this country, either legally or illegally, who are also interested in ideas and who are interested in things other than becoming an American, we become susceptible to a disease that really will destroy us. It is a disease that works its way from within the body politic in this country, and it is susceptible to an attack from without.
We see what's happening today. We have been calling it a war on terror. It is a misnomer. It is incorrect to label it that way. It is not a war on terror that we face and that we are trying to advance. It is a war against radical Islam. Terror is a tactic of radical Islamists. It is not the entity with which we are at war.
Lao Tzu, of course, is a famous Chinese philosopher, and he has stated and
has been quoted over the years because of his insight into both the nature of war and into the nature of human beings. He said at one point that there are two things that are desperately needed in order to be successful in any clash. One is the knowledge of who your enemy really is. Who are they? What makes them tick? Why do they do the things they are doing? The other is, he says, a knowledge of who you are. We have to understand who it is we are fighting. Again, it is not simply terrorists.
It is radical Islam. Islam's hostility towards the West has nothing to do with American troops in Muslim lands or America's support for Israel or the plight of the Palestinians. The first thing we must understand is that Muslims believe the Koran is the word of god as dictated to Mohammed. It cannot be interpreted by man. This is troubling because the book's passages call for the destruction of opposing religions, the extermination of non-Muslims, and the imposition of a worldwide caliphate.
Among other things, the Koran tells Muslims: those who disbelieve we shall roast them in fire, they may feel the punishment. When you meet the unbelievers, smite them, and when you have caused a bloodbath among them, bind a bond firmly on them. Take the infidels captive and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. They that reject faith, take not friends from their ranks and make them flee in the way of Allah . . . seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take no friends from their ranks. Fight them until there is no dissension, and religion is entirely Allah's. Instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Prepare for disbelievers chains, yokes, and a blazing fire. Cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve and strike off their heads and fingertips.
This is Islam's instruction book, and the instructions are quite clear.
So whether we want to admit it or not, the Western world is locked in a struggle against this form of Islam--a religion whose practitioners and adherents are inextricably linked to terrorism. And if we are to successfully defend ourselves against the desire of our enemies to impose a caliphate on the world, we must first be willing to openly identify them, say who they are.
Politically correct politicians in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are quick to dispute notions that Islam is inherently violent, and they flatly reject that Islam is engaged in a global struggle to dominate the world. But a quick look around the globe tells a different story.
While the most obvious clashes between Islam and the West are taking place in the streets of Israel, in the mountains of Afghanistan, and in the deserts of Iraq, Islam's foot soldiers are waging their war against non-Muslims in all corners of the world.
In Sudan, the conflict between the north and the south was basically a conflict between Arab Muslims and southern black Christians.
A visiting teacher from Denmark was jailed for insulting Islam after she let her class name a teddy bear ``Mohammad.''
In Thailand, a nation of more than 60 million that is more than 95 percent Buddhist--a nation that is known worldwide for its friendly people and enduring spirit of hospitality--some 3,000 Thais have been killed in brutal uprisings by Muslims who are determined to replace Thailand's democratic kingdom with an Islamic State.
Last week, Islamic militants in the southern Thai town of Pattani shot a state official some 30 times with a machine gun as he arrived to visit a school. After the attack, the gunman dragged his body out of the truck and chopped off his head in front of the horrified students and teachers.
In the Philippines--a former U.S. territory known more for its food and cathedrals than for Islamic extremism--the government has also been struggling with Islamic militants seeking to overthrow the democratic system and ``return'' the country to its ``pre-Christian 'Moor' national identity.''
This insurgency has gone on for decades and claimed more than 120,000 lives. Over the last few years, Filipino soldiers, priests, other Christians, and non-Muslims have been routinely captured and beheaded.
In Indonesia--which is struggling to maintain a democratic system amid calls for the imposition of Sharia law--dozens of demonstrators recently attacked the local ``Playboy'' magazine office, injuring police officers and damaging property. Keep in mind that the Indonesian version of the magazine does not even contain nudity, and is primarily dedicated to Western pop culture and fashion.
After the incident, it was not the militants, but Erwin Arnada--the magazine's editor--who was arrested and forced to face charges of violating the country's indecency laws and faces a long prison sentence.
For more than 40 years, Malaysia--a former British colony--has successfully balanced its democratic secular form of government with the plurality of its citizens' Muslim roots. Slowly, however, these roots are ripping up the fabric of freedom in this country.
In 2005, the country's Federal court system dismissed appeals by four Muslims who were sentenced to 3 years in jail for wrongfully attempting to convert from Islam. Despite the Malaysian constitution's guarantee to all people the right to profess and practice one's own religion, the court disregarded the Federal constitution and ceded jurisdiction of the case to a Sharia court.
In 2007, over the objections of his Hindu wife and family, Emm Moorthy--part of the first Malaysian team to climb Mount Everest and an army commando--was declared a Muslim after his death and buried as one.
In another case, local authorities refused to recognize the conversion of a Muslim woman to become a Catholic. In addition, the local registrar refused her application for marriage to a Catholic man because Islam prohibits Muslims from marrying non-Muslims. Courageously, she filed suit, optimistic that the Malaysian constitution's provisions for equal protection and freedom would win the day. Unfortunately, amid Islamist protestors' shouts of ``Allah-o- Akbar'' inside the courtroom, a judge dismissed her application finding that ``ethnic Malays'' are constitutionally defined as ``Muslims,'' making conversion from Islam and her marriage to a Catholic man illegal.
The judge went on to say that he could not allow her to change her religion because granting her such an exemption would encourage future converts.
That's part of the world that we seldom hear about but where actions like this are everyday occurrences. These developments in Asia and Africa are problematic, but the wave of Islam is also washing over Europe's shores. While Islamists work to eliminate legal protections for free speech and free association in Asia and Africa in order to replace pluralism with Islam, they are using these freedoms and the legal system in Europe in order to determine democratic institutions and replace them with Sharia Law, undermining democratic institutions.
Sharia Law calls for brutal punishment, such as the stoning of women who are accused of adultery or having children out of wedlock, cutting off the hands of petty thieves, lashings for the casual consumption of alcohol and a failure of women to wear a veil or head-scarf.
Muslims in the UK recently used a loophole in the Federal arbitration law to make Islamic Sharia Law and the decisions of the Sharia court legally binding in civil cases in the United Kingdom.
A recent poll conducted by the Centre for Social Cohesion in the United Kingdom found that some 40 percent of Muslim students in the United Kingdom support the introduction of Sharia law there, and 33 percent support the imposition of an Islamic Sharia-based government worldwide. Another 32 percent of the British Muslim youth living believe that killing for the religion is acceptable, while 20 percent are unsure.
Just days after the London subway attack, Tariq Ali, a prominent British Muslim activist, was quick to suggest that London residents ``paid the price'' for British support in the Iraqi campaign.
Another academic, George Hajjar, went even further proclaiming, ``I hope every patriotic and Islamic Arab will participate in this war and will shift the war not only to America but to . . . wherever America may be.'' He added, ``There are no innocent people,'' and referred to the victims of the attack as ``collateral casualties.''
In the Netherlands, the number of Muslims has grown from just 54 in 1909 to almost 1 million in 2004. These changes have not come without costs.
2002, Pim Fortoon, a politician who expressed concern about the rapid influx of Muslim immigration, was shot six times in the head as he walked to his car. During his court appearance, the killer told the judge in killing Fortoon he ``acted on behalf of the country's Muslims.''
2004. Theo Van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker who had the temerity to make a movie critical of Islam's treatment of women, was shot and killed by a 26-year old Dutch born Muslim in broad daylight in a busy Amsterdam street. After shooting Van Gogh, the jihadist pinned a note to his body threatening the co-author of the script. Then he began the task of decapitating Mr. Van Gogh's lifeless body.
Another Dutch politician who has raised concerns about the danger of Islam's rise in Holland, Geert Wilders, has received numerous death threats and is forced to travel with 24-hour day security. According to Mr. Wilders, the Dutch government has completely capitulated to Islamists in the wake of these politically motivated murders.
He recently told the Hudson Institute, ``We have gone from calls by one cabinet members to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays to statements by another cabinet member that Islam is part of Dutch culture,'' to an affirmation by the Christian Democrat Attorney General that he is willing to accept Sharia Law in the Netherlands. And there is another majority.
We now have cabinet members who pass with passports from Morocco and Turkey. More alarming still, one half of Dutch Muslims say they understand the 9/11 attacks.
Before I go on, going back to the United Kingdom for a moment. The largest mosque in the world is being built outside London. Recently Archbishop of Canterbury said they should have two tracks, a two-track system in England: one Sharia Law and one traditional English law. Mohammed is now the most popular name in England for a child.
France is also gripped by the crisis. Muslim rioting gripped the country for weeks last year resulting in death and unprecedented destruction of private property. There are hundreds of areas inside Paris and inside and around Paris where police do not go. They are entirely Muslim areas, and the police are essentially afraid to go in there.
The PEW Research Center reported that more than half of all French Muslims loyal to Islam is greater than their loyalty to France, and one in three do not object to suicide attacks.
The demographics, of course, are significant, and that is what is causing a significant change in the entire attitude of Western Europe about such things as Islam and the changing of Western laws.
That is the point of this, that all of this comes with a cost. There is a challenge to western civilization. We have a system that was established by the concept of the rule of law and many other things that unite us as a Nation in the past and united the West in the past are being threatened and destroyed.
Before liberals in America roll out the Islamic welcome mat any farther, they ought to look closely at Europe. As I noted, many Muslims in Europe openly expressed a desire to replace secular democracies there with Islamic caliphates. Hardly surprising when you have an immigration policy that allows for the importation of millions of radical Muslims, you are also importing the radical ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the foundations of Western democracy, such as gender equity, pluralism, and individual liberty.
These lessons are unfolding in plain sight across the Atlantic in Europe, but what many Americans don't realize is that these same problems are beginning to manifest themselves here in the United States in parts of Michigan, New York, and Virginia. Yes, yet America's political leaders remain asleep at the switch.
The PEW Research Center, for example, asked American Muslims between the ages of 18 and 29, When are suicide bombings justified? Twenty-six percent said that they were always justified. Another 15 percent said they were often justified.
Another potential threat, settlement poses to the United States is made worse by the fact of the sheer volume of both legal and illegal immigration into our country. Combine that with the rise of culture relativism, political correctness, and the lefts' obsession with diversity, and you have a recipe for disaster as immigrants are prevented from assimilating and separate ethnic cultural communities spring up all over the United States.
We are again confronted with this situation, and we are made less able to deal with it because of this, the political correctness that-- and this multicultural society that we are creating here. It makes us weaker as a society to deal with this.
We are told constantly, as I said earlier, about the deficiencies of the West and that we are not really a country at all, that the United States isn't just a Nation of sovereign people, it is just a place on the planet. Just a place on the continent.
It's called America, and if you live here, you're an American. There are no other ties that should bind us, certainly not a linguistic tie, certainly not the English language. That's what they say. I say it is the imperative tie that must bind us. It is the glue that holds our society together. It is the thing that allows us to communicate with each other. And it is imperative that we have something because we have so many things in this country that pull us apart, it is imperative that we have something, anything, that pulls us together. Language is that one thing.
Our people come from everywhere around the world from every different kind of culture, religion, color, historical background, and language. We have--something when they come here has got to begin the process of assimilation because immigration without assimilation is creating a phenomena that is like putting a gun to our heads.
Examples of this kind of political correctness go on and on. Los Angeles Roosevelt High School. An 11th grade teacher told a nationally syndicated radio program that she hates the textbooks that she's been told to use and the State-mandated history curriculum because they ignore students of Mexican ancestry. Because the students don't see themselves in the curriculum, the teacher has chosen to ``modify the curriculum'' by replacing it with activities like mural walks intended to open the students' eyes to their indigenous culture.
A friend of the teacher invited to help with the mural walk went on to tell the students, ``Your education has been one big lie after another.''
In a textbook called, ``Across the Centuries,'' which is used widely across America for the teaching of 7th grade history, the term ``jihad'' is defined as ``to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil.''
In 2002, the new guidelines for teaching history in the New Jersey public schools failed to mention America's Founding Fathers, the Pilgrims, or the Mayflower. After this became public, New Jersey changed the guidelines.
In a Prentice Hall history textbook used by students in Palm Beach County high schools, titled ``A World Conflict,'' the first five pages of the World War II chapter cover such topics as discrimination against women in the Armed Forces, racial segregation during the war, and internment of Japanese Americans, far fewer than are dedicated to the 292,000 Americans who died in the conflict, fighting against totalitarianism and genocide.
A Washington State teacher substituted the word ``winter'' for the word ``Christmas'' in a carol to be sung at a school program so as not to appear to be favoring one faith over another.
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 was to ``celebrate our resistance to being colonized and absorbed by racist empire builders.'' 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 Our Land.'' This is a textbook in a New Mexico school district.
Nicholas DeGenova, an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia
University, told students that he wanted to see ``a million Mogadishus''--a reference to an operation in Somalia in 1993 in which elite U.S. Army personnel were pinned down in a fierce firefight. Eighteen Americans were killed and 84 wounded. DeGenova added that, ``The only true heroes are those who find ways to help defeat the U.S. military.'' Administrators at Columbia University expressed regret, saying they were ``appalled by the statements,'' but took no action to dismiss DeGenova, who is still teaching. Teaching, by the way, is a liberal way to interpret his activity.
At Royal Oak Intermediate School in Covina, California, students in Len Cesene's seventh grade history class fasted last week--this was some time ago, last week was the quote from the article--last week to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. His letter to parents explained that ``in an attempt to promote a greater understanding and empathy towards the Muslim religion and toward other cultures, I am encouraging students to participate in an extra credit assignment. Students may choose to fast for one, two, or three days. During this time, students may only drink water during daylight hours.''
A Federal judge in Brooklyn interpreted New York City policy on holiday displays in public schools allow for the display of the Jewish Menorah and the Muslim Crescent--but not the display of a Christian Nativity scene. The judge based his decision on the notion that the Muslim Crescent and Jewish Menorah are ``secular'' symbols, while the Christian Nativity scene is not, and the list goes on and on.
Certainly, many people have heard about the professor from the University of Colorado who claimed that all the people that were killed in the Twin Towers deserved to be killed; they were little Eichmanns. Again, it goes on and on.
And individually, these kinds of incidents may seem regrettable and harmless. They are just examples of Americans' tolerance for diversity and multiculturalism. Collectively, they will subject our Nation to death by a thousand cuts.
Islamic leaders have seen the inability of our government institutions to maintain cultural cohesion, and despite the mainstream media's attempt to report it because of political correctness, they are no longer shy about expressing their own intentions.
According to the Manifesto of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, ``Our work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.''
According to Professor Hatem Bazian of the University of California at Berkeley, ``It's about time that we have an intifada in this country, that changes, fundamentally the political dynamics here.''
Yousef Khattab, of the U.S.-based Islamic Thinkers Society, recently said in an interview that ``Islam will dominate, that's what it will be. We want to see Sharia Law here, and it will be. The flag of Islam will be, God willing, on the White House, if that's where we choose it to be.''
According to a co-founder of the Council on American Islamic Relation, CAIR, Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, ``We Muslims have a chance, in America, to be the moral leadership in America. The problem is when? It will happen, I have no doubt in my mind. It depends on me and you, either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country.''
The head of another Muslim group, Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations, Imam Johari Abdul Malik, told a crowd, ``Before Allah closes our eyes for the last time you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America--that's where we are now--to the first religion in America.''
Muslim ``activist'' Abu Waleed told a crowd of reporters, ``We are not Muslims . . . who are simply here to integrate and become part of democracy and freedom and adopt these values. Rather, what we hope to do is to engage with the . . . society to . . . one day implement the Sharia over manmade law and sharia over . . . Washington, D.C.''
A Muslim man recently told CNN's Anderson Cooper, ``We are bound by the rules of Islam. If a woman runs away, she must be killed.''
Our essentially ``open door'' policy of unlimited legal and illegal immigration may seem like a harmless manifestation of our national tradition of welcoming newcomers with open arms, but it is an invitation to our destruction.
For example, the American left's dogmatic adherence to the idea of ``diversity'' and their tendency to elevate it above all other values also led them to establish the visa lottery, or ``Diversity Visa'' program in 1990. Hundreds of thousands of people have come with these kinds of programs throughout the United States, and we do this at our peril.
We were a Nation that was identifiable. It was identifiable by the kind of language that we spoke, the religion that we observed. Just an example of what we were at one time and what we must think about as what held us together, the ideas, the attitude, yes, the religion, yes, the language. They were something that at one point in time held us together as a Nation.
The Trinity Church case in 1892 said, ``If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its law, its business, its customs, and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth . . . this is a Christian Nation.'' Justice Brewer.
``We are a Christian people, according to one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God,'' Justice Sutherland, 1931, the Macintosh case.
1983, ``To invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not . . . a violation of the Establishment Clause; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.''
And then, of course, later decisions began to erode that concept of religious similarity in this country.
Who we were, this is something that I want to read and will tell you at the end who wrote this; although, probably the content of it will let us know. It was written on June 6, 1944.
``Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
``Lead them straight and true; give them strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
``They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
``They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
``For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of consequence. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
``Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
``And for us at home--fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas--whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them--help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
``Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
``Give us strength, too--strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our Armed Forces.
``And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrow that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
``And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith
in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
``With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
``Thy will be done, Almighty God.
``Amen.''
That, of course, was the prayer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as our men embarked upon D Day. This prayer, I wonder if it could be said today by the leader of this country. I wonder if the President of the United States would have the courage to start off a prayer asking for the Lord to help protect our religion, our civilization, our Republic, and to set free a suffering humanity. Would we add the words ``our civilization,'' ``our religion''? Could we? Do they mean anything? What do they describe today to anyone? Or are we too afraid to mention this for fear that it will be perceived by someone as narrow-minded?
And so, therefore, we do not discuss who we are or at least who we were. But just as dangerous an event as D Day was and just as much as we needed prayer to protect the men who were going across that channel, we find ourselves in a world that's equally dangerous. We find ourselves daily facing events that challenge us in so many ways and are as dangerous and as threatening to our very existence as was the threat posed by Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.
They come from a different source, those threats. They are not identifiable as a single nation. It makes it harder for us to deal with it. But we as a country must do so.
And this is my parting thought for this Congress, for this Nation. Pray for the same thing that Franklin Delano Roosevelt prayed for: strength, courage to defeat an enemy that has every intention of defeating us and destroying Western civilization. Do not walk quietly into the night of a dark age. Know who we are. Know who the enemy is. Hold up this Nation's flag. Take back our country.
