Roy Blunt: “I am privileged to have been yielded time to speak. I am grateful that we got this time extended without objection, and…”

“I am privileged to have been yielded time to speak. I am grateful that we got this time extended without objection, and I join the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) in supporting the gentlewoman's amendment, without some of his reservations, but these are the kinds of things that grow as they move. The idea of a United Nations Democracy Fund is so critically important. There are so many things happening in the world today where we need to encourage those democracies, whether they be in Lebanon or the Ukraine or many other places around the world where democracy is beginning to grow, beginning to flourish, and to do those things that encourage the institutions to grow and perpetuate and maintain and sustain democracy. A free press, the rule of law, civil society that works in a democratic way, the protection of minority rights are all the kinds of things that the gentlewoman's fund and the concept would promote around the world. It is a critical element. Sustaining democracy, sustaining peace is more than just having the instruments of war, which are important to have, but also having the instruments of peace, the instruments of democracy. Democracy is more than just the absence of war. Democracy is the kind of society that the United Nations needs to encourage, needs to encourage in a greater way, and through all its institutions I think we need to be prejudiced towards the democracies of the world.…”