Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for taking this moment to speak on this. I cannot imagine a more important topic for us right now in this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, we are unique in history in that our Nation rests on the understanding that our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not a grant from the government; they are a gift from Almighty God. And among these enshrined in our First Amendment is the freedom of speech, which is the most essential freedom, along with the freedom of religion.

The peace and tranquility of our entire Republic is based on the understanding that we have a right to have our voice heard and that we have a right to have peaceful public discourse and dissent. That is how we come up with good legislation. That is how to have good policy. That is how we avoid conflict and wars on our soil.

But we have entered a most troubling time in our Nation. This cancel culture has persisted, and it needs to stop. The unilateral march of legislation meant not to protect our liberties, but, rather, force the American people to conform to woke ideology in this House needs to stop.

Then there is big tech that canceled conservatives while allowing for liberal Members of this body to repeatedly call for unrest in our streets and raise money to bail out violent rioters, not to mention providing a platform for Communist China terrorist groups and the like. This hypocrisy is not overlooked.

Recently traveling throughout my district the last couple weeks, I came across a few immigrants in my community. I know them. They came up to me concerned about what we are in at this point in our Nation. Some of us who are so privileged to be born in this country where we have inherited these wonderful liberties might not see the signs so readily as people who have come from Ecuador, Cuba, and Iran. But these individuals came up to me because they are very concerned. They are concerned that they left this and now they are seeing it be rooted and established here in our Nation.

Ironically, the one from Iran was concerned because she was talking to me and she had liked a post about our taking out of Soleimani and she got banned from Instagram following that. She knows firsthand what is going on in Iran. She is a first-generation immigrant. I was troubled, especially when she looked at me and said: We have more freedom of speech in Iran at this moment--this is her opinion--than we do right here right now. No one is trying to cancel people, you can speak freely against the government there.

Now, I am not saying Iran is a wonderful place to live. I am thankful to be here in the United States of America, but we are heading down a troubling path.

I remember being at an event just a couple days ago. It was before the election. Some lady was there, and she was talking to me about her motivation for being involved in the public discourse. She came up to me and said: I am from Ecuador. I remember escaping.

Her parents did not make it out, but she made it out. She didn't call it ``to the United States of America.'' She called it ``to freedom country.''

She said: We cannot lose freedom country. I am here to support this, I am here to work, and I am here to do whatever I can because we cannot lose freedom country.

Mr. Speaker, I am here to stand up along with our colleagues because we cannot lose freedom country. It is extremely and essentially important that we in this House and people across the United States of America stand up in this hour at this time.

Ronald Reagan once said--and I have said this before to many people, encouraging them how important it is to get involved in the process and also to thank our veterans--``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.''

I thought about that quote. There is another part of it that has resonated with me even more and more in this time, and it is: ``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.''

God forbid that we continue down this path and reach that point where we have to tell our kids and grandkids about what it was once like to live in the beloved United States where men were free.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for setting aside this Special Order. I cannot imagine a more important topic.

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Mr. CLOUD. I certainly do.

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Mr. CLOUD. Sure. You know my family, you know my wife. I have had those comments put on me that I somehow don't like Brown people and that I am somehow racist. They fail sometimes to look at my family photo. My wife is an immigrant. I didn't marry her because she was an immigrant. I married because I loved her. I met her when she was 15. I was 17 at the time. We had a long-distance relationship. I met her back before Al Gore invented the internet.

Mr. Speaker, I can tell you what an honor it was for her to stand there in the U.S. courthouse, raise her hand and take the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time and become a citizen of this great country.

So we understand that there is a proper way to do immigration. We want a big, beautiful gate to this country. But to say that we need to secure our communities and keep out the cartel activity, I serve on the Interparliamentary Group between the U.S. and Mexico, so I have had the opportunity to talk with our colleagues in Mexico. I talk to them about how arrogant of a notion it is for us to assume that the way we heal the world's ills is to bring everybody to the United States. That notion is uniquely American arrogant.

We want people to prosper everywhere. And what we know from our unique history is that if you embrace the principles this Nation was founded upon, you can have the same sort of prosperity. You can have your people prosper everywhere.

When I said that thought, we got resounding applause from them because they understand that our wanting to secure their borders, we want their communities to thrive, we want our communities along the border to be protected, and we want migrants not to be persecuted and abused along the way.

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