The publication is reproduced in full below:
PERSONAL EXPLANATION
______
HON. LOUIE GOHMERT
of texas
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I was unable to vote on June 29, 2021 due to an invitation from the Governor of Texas to travel to the border to observe the ongoing crisis that is happening there. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: YES on Roll Call No. 196.
I am exceedingly concerned with the Speaker's determination to pass H.R. 3005, To direct the Joint Committee on the Library to replace the bust of Roger Brooke Taney in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the United States Capitol with a bust of Thurgood Marshall to be obtained by the Joint Committee on the Library and to remove certain statues from areas of the United States Capitol which are accessible to the public, to remove all statues of individuals who voluntarily served the Confederate States of America from display in the United States Capitol, and for other purposes. This bill is Cultural Marxism brought to the House floor for a vote.
This bill attempts to strip individual states of their right to choose the statues they are paying for. In doing so, it seeks to erase their history--the bad, the good, and everything in between, that informs whom we've been and whom we are, as well as where we've been, so we can aptly navigate where we are going. As George Orwell presciently foreshadowed, ``Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.''
But is the Party always right? Surely it is not. This point highlights another grievous flaw in H.R. 3005. Although it purports to cleanse the Capitol complex of Confederate statues and busts, in doing so it actually removes only Democrat statues and busts. Yes, Democrats are removing their Democrat forefathers for the sin of their slavery, or other support for the Confederacy, committed in times past.
So why vote YES? Because having fought this battle for a state's right to choose--warning about the dangers of arbitrarily banishing history from our midst--I am sick and tired of defending states' rights so Democrats can try to rewrite history and say Republicans are defending racists. We are doing no such thing. In fact, I've even gone further and tried to get an amendment made in order that reveals the dirty secret of just how racist, pro-slavery, and anti-freedom Democrats have been in the past. They want their own statues removed for two unspoken reasons: (1) People won't look up their former heroes and find out how racist Democrats have been, and (2) A move to Marxism requires destruction of history first. If people don't know their nation's true history, they're more easily duped into accepting a totalitarian government. So, if Democrats want to remove all Democrat statues and busts in the Capitol, I will not stand in their way.
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 113
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