The publication is reproduced in full below:
PASSING THROUGH THE FIERY TRIALS OF DEMOCRACY TO SAVE AND RENEW OUR
REPUBLIC
______
HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE
of texas
in the house of representatives
Monday, January 25, 2021
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the Committees on the Judiciary and on Homeland Security, as the descendant of patriotic and heroic veterans who risked their lives to defend our nation and our freedoms, as a parent with the fervent hope and determination to pass on this great democracy to the next generation, and as a citizen of the greatest republic in world history, I rise to reflect on the state of our democracy as it is about to open a new chapter in the remarkable story of America.
In 1776, the Framers declared the self-evident and later the universal truth that all persons are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As important, the Framers declared that ``to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.'' This genius of self-government is the Framers' gift to us and America's gift to the world, and for nearly 250 years the world has looked upon the United States with wonder, awe, and envy not just for its awesome powers and achievements, but for being the exemplar to which most freedom-loving nations aspire.
But as President Lincoln reminded us at Gettysburg, the proposition that a people can govern themselves is not to be taken for granted; it is a proposition that will be tested time and again and it for us, the living, to highly resolve to commit ourselves to the great task always before us, that government of the people, by the people, and for the people not perish from the earth.
As Thomas Paine said in his time, the past four years were times that tried one's soul. The nation was tested, severely so, by what can only be described as the modern-day Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: a deadly pandemic, economic devastation unseen since the Great Depression, social justice unrest, and the very real threat of authoritarianism. While the threat posed by these challenges are still with us to varying extent, we can all rejoice that the nation withstood the challenge, e pluribus unum, by standing together as ``We The People.'' President Lincoln reminded us that in times of testing and challenge that ``the fiery trial through which we pass will mark us down in honor or dishonor until the latest generation'' but that so long as the people ``retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.''
And Lincoln was right, for on Election Day 2020, Americans by a substantial majority, voted to withhold consent to govern from an incumbent administration and confer it upon another. That act of self-
government and sovereign expression was solemnized on January 20, 2021, at noon when Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris took the oath of office as the 46th President and 49th Vice-President of the United States.
The Philadelphia Miracle of 1789 endures but only because we Americans resolve that it does and work to make it so. The President takes the oath of office pledging to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. As does every one of my congressional colleagues, I have sacredly pledged true faith and allegiance in defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and to well and faithfully execute the duties of the office I hold. I do this ever mindful that the purpose of our form of government is ``to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty for posterity.''
But we all have a responsibility to preserve and strengthen this constitutional republic and pass it on to the next generation by engaging in robust, lawful, and peaceful civic activity to hold our government to account and to peaceably assemble when necessary to petition for a redress of grievances as shown by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington, following the example of Mahatma Gandhi; by John Lewis and the Civil Rights foot soldiers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; by Elizabeth Cady Staton and Lucretia Mott at Seneca Falls; by Cesar Chavez leading the fight for human dignity of farmworkers, and by Black Lives Matter demonstrators protesting inequalities in the criminal justice system. For the work of democracy is never complete, our union is always in the process of being made more perfect.
Americans have suffered, endured, and survived much pain and heartbreak over the past four years. But Psalms 30:5 teaches that
``weeping lasteth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'' So, let us all be of good cheer, for tomorrow, at the end of morning, a new day dawns in America with the inauguration of President Biden and Vice-
President Harris and our collective journey towards the beloved community continues inexorably forward.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 14
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