Patrick Kennedy: “I cannot emphasize enough to the people in this Chamber, my colleagues watching on TV and the American people at large…”

“I cannot emphasize enough to the people in this Chamber, my colleagues watching on TV and the American people at large, that this is no light matter that we have been talking about. We seem to be taking such a cavalier attitude to this, and I know that obviously a lot has to do with the politics of this season. I dare say, though, what we are embarking on truly goes to the nature of our whole form of government. I just had the opportunity last week, as a member of the Committee on National Security, to go to New York to listen to the President's speech on global terrorism, and I met many diplomats who have a working relationship with our allies, democracies around the world, in Europe and the former Soviet bloc countries, and all of them are so perplexed about what is going on here in this country. My friend who deals with them on a day-to-day basis told me that his judgment of why they are so perplexed is because they have not been at the democracy game as long as we have. They have been under tyranny, the tyranny of fascism and Communism, within their own lifetimes, and they know that the miracle of this system of government is not to be messed with.”