Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Roy, my great friend from Texas. I appreciate the sacrifices that he has made on behalf of this great Nation.

If you know me, you know I am a fan of books because I think, in this transient, throwaway society, they are a record of things that happened in the past. So, like I said, if you know me, you know I love books. They never asked me, because I am not running for President, what books do you recommend? But if I were running for President and they ever deigned to ask me, this would be one. This is by a guy named Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. It is called ``Warning to the West.'' It is hard to come by. It is a little expensive, but it is well worth the effort. I just want to read an excerpt to you where he is thinking about the West as he sits in a Russian gulag.

``We contemplate the West from what will be your future, or we look back 70 years to see our past suddenly repeating itself today. And what we see is always the same as it was then: adults deferring to the opinion of their children; the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority passively obsessed by a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion leading to political upheaval. What will happen as a result of all this lies ahead of us. But the time is near, and from bitter memory, we can easily predict what these events will be.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PERRY. I certainly will.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PERRY. It was a guy who lived it, who saw it happen, who lived under the oppression of a Russian gulag, imprisoned for decades, and watched the West, watched 66 million souls exterminated on the border of Russia and Europe, and Europe did nothing about it.

We are in this Capitol today, as Chip has already said, surrounded by razor wire and fences. Free speech, they are saying: Well, you have free speech. The government is not censoring you. The government is not canceling you.

Well, in this age where Google, Facebook, these platforms have 95, 99 percent market share, whatever the heck it is, when you are taken off that, your free speech is taken away, effectively.

We are not here to talk to just each other. Free speech means you can talk to each other, everybody else. So it is not about being able to just have a conversation with yourself in a cell. Free speech is about discussing ideas, and some of them are going to be unpalatable.

There were book burnings back at this time because they wanted to destroy ideas. We are not afraid of ideas. We are afraid of the advent of communism and socialism in our country, but we are not afraid to discuss it because we know that our ideas will win.

What we are afraid of is not being able to discuss it, and that is what is happening. That is happening all across America, whether you are Project Veritas, whether you are President Trump, whether you are Marjorie Taylor Greene and you say the wrong thing. You say the wrong thing, and it is not about disagreement for the other side; it is about obliteration of your thought.

This is a very, very dangerous precipice that we stand on, and we know the outcome. Solzhenitsyn, even though he was discredited-- imagine, discredited by the Soviet Union and the Russians. But he came to America, and he tried to tell us over and over and over again.

Many people know, but my good friend from Texas talked about the concern the American people have. They are scared.

They are not scared of their neighbor. They are not scared of a Democrat. They are not scared of a Republican. They are scared of their government. This is a government of and for the people, by the people. This is our government. The government doesn't own us; we own it. The government is supposed to fear us.

You know, I tell people, it didn't end or it didn't begin with gulags and slave labor work camps where people died of exposure, starvation, exhaustion. It didn't start with that. It started with what we are talking about right now, with razor wire and fences around your Capitol and the inability to say what you want to say. That is where it starts.

We don't have to ask: Well, where does it end?

We know where it ends.

I thank the good gentleman from Texas for this opportunity. You know that we will stand right with you in this crusade to keep America free and to keep speech free.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source