THE RADICAL RIGHT -- (House of Representatives - May 18, 2005)
(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the word "nuclear" holds special meaning in our world. It is a word that has become synonymous with chaos, total destruction and annihilation. Nuclear is the word that for the last half century has struck fear in the hearts and minds of people across the United States.
For the last 2 months, Republicans in the Senate have threatened the nuclear option, like destroying the world was something you planned for and even boasted about. Over and over, the Republican-controlled Senate threatened to go nuclear, as if they were shouting "lock and load" at some local gun club.
For far too long, the Senate majority leader has been a trigger happy gun slinger who set aside a Colt 45 and ordered up a thermal nuclear warhead in its place. Just imagine the outcome if he had been President staring down Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis.
Today, Senate Republicans released the nuclear warhead and the blast zone extends east or west, north to south, incinerating the rights of every American. It will be the first strike launched on behalf of the radical right aimed at annihilating the safety, security and freedom of every American.
This is not about politics. The real Republican target is the U.S. Supreme Court and the judiciary. The Republican leaders said so in the House, and the Senate leaders said so in the Senate. No fallout shelter will keep us safe from the nuclear winter they plunge America into.
The radical Republican right has an agenda and they intend to use every weapon at their disposal to enforce their will upon the American people. The radical Republican right wants to dictate what a woman can and cannot do with her body. The radical Republican right wants to abolish women's rights one court decision at a time. Republicans just gave the radical extremist the right to abolish Roe v. Wade. Republicans just handed the radical right the keys to our democracy. Women's rights will be nuked.
Republican extremists will replace a woman's right to choose with a requirement to be subservient. The Republican Party intends to stack the Court and stack the deck against women.
They intend to violate the environment, too. Republican extremists want to stack the courts so their corporate lobbyists and special interests are shielded from liability, protected from acting responsibly, and given the right to foul the air, pollute the water, dump toxins on the ground, and spew carcinogens in the atmosphere.
Greed is God to these radicals who are attempting to subvert democracy with religious idolatry. Run for your lives, America, the Republicans are coming. Right wing extremists in the Republican Party control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and they want the new trophy, and it is called the Supreme Court.
They want to send their militants into your homes, into your lives, next to your death bed, to force their will upon you. The Republicans in charge today want to replace the Constitution with the Bible. The Republicans in charge today would like nothing better than to enforce a literal interpretation of the Bible in every American home, every American school, and every American mind.
The Republican majority leader from Tennessee wants America to return to 1925 when the Butler Act in his State told people what to think and what to believe. But before the Republicans shout their Hosannas on high, let me recite a passage from the Bible. It was used by the defense in the Scopes monkey trial.
Dayton, Tennessee, science teacher, 25 years old, John T. Scopes was persecuted and prosecuted for teaching science and not religion in the classroom. The great attorney, Clarence Darrow, who defended Scopes, called upon the Bible. "A holy book, a good book, but not the only book," Darrow said, in defense of a man who was convicted but later acquitted by the Supreme Court of the United States.
And I recall his words today to remind the Senate majority leader and every Republican intimidated into hypocrisy to remember the Bible. Clarence Darrow quoted Proverbs, chapter 11, verse 29, and here is what the Bible says: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."
Tonight we begin the ice age because the wind is going to be cold coming out of that Senate. Remember, "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."
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