Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. BABIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for having the Special Order on freedom, on liberty, on constitutionalism, and our God-given rights.

Thank you for what you have said there, Mr. Roy.

Madam Speaker, I am here tonight to highlight and amplify the miraculous events that have happened less than 100 miles from U.S. soil on the island of Cuba, news that, sadly, we haven't heard nearly enough about.

After more than 60 years of oppression, injustice, and fear under a Communist Party that enjoys opulent privileges while others struggle just to survive, Cubans took to the streets shouting: ``Liberty'' and ``Down with communism.''

And this wasn't just in Havana and the big cities. Renewed calls for freedom were all across small villages and towns in the Cuban countryside.

These brave protestors, many of them young people, knew their appeals would be met with violence. They understood that they would be putting themselves and their families at grave risk. They knew they would be labeled enemies of the state, enemies of the revolution, and they would be arrested or potentially even murdered.

Today, I would like to let each of my liberty-loving Cuban brothers and sisters out there know that we hear you. I commend your astounding courage, your thirst for freedom, and your desire for true justice in Cuba.

We, as Americans, have a moral responsibility to support these protests of Cuba's cruel Communist regime.

How can we continue to be ``the shining city upon a hill,'' as President Reagan once eloquently said, if we do not help those who are seeking the same divine right that our ancestors fought and died for in the Revolution, the same rights that our Heavenly Father intended for all people?

I think it is time for the reign of dictatorship and terror to come to an end and for freedom and for liberty to take their rightful place.

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Mr. BABIN. Madam Speaker, at this time, I cannot answer in the affirmative. I think our country is under grave attack, our liberties, our freedoms, our constitutional rights, the Bill of Rights, the very reasons that Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren, and all of those Founders, like John Hancock, who started the movement that culminated in the Revolutionary War and got us out from under the yoke of Great Britain.

I will say this: I think what we are seeing today is, quite frankly, a startling, unbelievable change of events that I never thought that I would see in my entire lifetime, the assault on our God-given rights that we are seeing today.

What Mr. Roy just said about drafting our daughters and what he just mentioned and listening to our friends across the aisle over there talking about the unfairness and the racism that is incumbent and inherently in our election processes, their solution would be an absolute violation of the U.S. Constitution.

I think it goes without saying that if you have to show an I.D. to get into the White House or to get a loan or to do anything, really, of any kind of nature as far as that is concerned, that we have to have the ability to ask for a photo I.D. to ascertain whether you are, indeed, that person that you are actually professing to be when you come in and cast that vote.

So we hear a lot of talk. But I will tell you, it is just talk. When you talk about freedom and liberties, we have to follow the Constitution and God's law. That is what it has to be.

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