Dennis gives really great speeches which he writes himself.
Check them out here:
http://www.kucinich.us/speeches.phpHere is one on Government from way back in November 2000 that really sets the tone for what was to come . . .
http://www.kucinich.us/speeches/speech3.htmGovernment
by Congressman Dennis Kucinich
The following essay appeared in Imagine What America Could Be edited by Marianne Williamson and published by Rodale press November 2000.
As the chambers and passageways of the Great Pyramid are said to have encrypted the past and predicted the future, the majesty of the U.S. Capitol, its chambers and passageways, its paintings and pronouncements is similarly evocative of the past, present, and future of America's government.
As I sit inside the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the 106th Congress and try to imagine the best this government can be a half-century from now, I am moved by the beauty of the People's House. A giant eagle soars above, etched in glass against a huge canopy, its wings spread over the assembled Congress. I noticed it instantly when I first walked onto the floor as an elected member. The eagle is quick, daring, possessed of exceptional vision. It is symbolic of our national spirit, which, when it soars, is awesome to behold. Secure in the eagle's beak is a prophetic banner inscribed with our nation's original motto: e pluribus unum. "Out of many, one." I think of my own journey as one of 435 members of the House representing 50 states. Here, I and those who chose me establish the merger of "We the People of the United States." The unity that the banner forever proclaims above the heads of the members of Congress speaks not to the fixed idea of flat history but to our interconnectedness how the choices that each one of us makes are choices for all of us; that the idea of unity precedes us, is present before us, and calls to us from a distant future. The very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, in performing the act of dissolving "the political bands which have connected" people with one another, confirms the underlying power of cohesiveness. The consciousness of interconnectedness, together with the principle of freedom, was the thought that birthed a nation.
"We the People" is also prologue. The constitutive is intuitive. The awareness that America exists as the thoughts, words, and deeds of each and every one of us can empower us to begin to create today the nation that we want for ourselves and for our children 50 years from now.
Each time we vote, each day we address the House, members of Congress face the Speaker's rostrum, above which, carved in marble, is the national motto adopted by Congress in 1956: in god we trust. This act of faith is stunning in a nation whose Constitution celebrates not only freedom of religion but the separation of Church and State in the First Amendment. Separation of Church and State is an ethic that encourages the unity of all Americans, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, other faith, or nonfaith. It is, after all, the House of all the people. A paradox occurs: It is clear that the founders never intended to separate the government from spiritual values. Otherwise, what of the summary appeal to the protection of Divine Providence in the Declaration itself? A tour of the Capitol reveals the spiritual heritage of the United States, with images of angels, divine light, and entreaties for holy intervention abounding in paintings, sculpture, and inscription, all describing a nation walking a lit path toward something intangible, just beyond the five senses. How else to explain, in the very center of the Capitol, in the canopy of the dome above the Rotunda, Constantino Brumidi's fresco The Apotheosis of Washington? Rising above a rainbow, looking down from starry heavens, our first president is flanked by winged beings in a joyous masterpiece of the transfiguring power of democracy. I've often come to the Rotunda in the early mornings, approaching it as I may a grand cathedral, to seek solitude for reflection.
At the beginning of every day, Congress is called to solemn attention with a prayer, a focused, concentrated meditation, a call for higher consciousness to help us carry forward the people's business. Congress as a repository of faith might strike some as brilliant hyperbole. But as representatives of the people, we are truly called by faith and to faith. Faith in our constituents, faith in ourselves, faith in our nation, faith in something that transcends our condition, some higher awareness that we can reach for, some understanding that comes from spirit when we ask for it. That we ultimately get what we pray for is a truism. What shall our prayers be for the government of the United States of tomorrow? Can you imagine the power of unity of prayer and purpose? Some religions teach that faith is empowered through good works. What if in the next 30 years we pray and work for Union, Justice, Liberty, Tolerance, and Peace, those foundational spiritual principles memorialized at the base of the Speaker's platform that faces the assembled Congress? What if we pray and work for a more perfect union 50 years hence?
In the Capitol, you can sense a certain spirit permeating the air, and you can imagine the possibilities of the people's government to inspire, to create new forms. The Capitol is infused with the energies of everyone who ever served here; of every member of Congress, every senator, every president. The energy and the intentions of not only officeholders but of all Americans are charged in this alabaster city. People can feel the history of the Capitol. They can feel the portent as well. This sense of discovery gives loft to our highest aspirations for ourselves and our nation. It confirms our sense of achievement. It informs our sense of the physical beauty of the structure of thought of our constitutional democracy and the principles that shaped it. Imagine the possibilities of tapping into the higher consciousness of the Spirit of America.
But just as our nation's great heart can almost be heard to sing, comes a jolt and one is returned to a dense, painful reality: Washington, D.C., 2000, is hyper-paced, fearful, and confused. Instead of debate that leads to a new synthesis expressing an underlying unity, we are trapped in dichotomous thinking that devolves into the incoherence of right versus left, Democrat versus Republican, rich versus poor, male versus female, young versus old, black versus white. The same discontinuity that occurred when our nation divided North from South is accelerated in the separation of people from the very government that is the work of their own hands.
Government is a manifestation of the impulse of the human community to organize for social and economic purposes. The attack on government is essentially an attack upon ourselves and our aspirations of what we are to become as a people. The attack on the institution of democratic government is in and of itself antidemocratic. It is a theft of the anchor points or philosophical coordinates of a free society. It would disestablish the American community and replace it with the tyranny of monolithic rule, whether by concentrated wealth or corporate control. As conscience becomes subordinate to commerce, we become alienated from our inalienable rights. Lost in an alien nation, people do not trust the government and the government does not trust the people. A dialectic of fear sets in. Institutional decay and public apathy follow. Self government deteriorates as people feel that neither their voice nor their vote matters. Government then loses its legitimacy, and Lincoln's prayer for an imperishable "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is not heard, lost in the deafening roar of the cash registers of interest groups who view democratic principles as an impediment to doing business, notwithstanding human needs.
Capitol Hill today is abuzz with busy people. We run, under the watchful eyes of a large security force, past the metal detectors, from meeting to meeting, tethered to our cell phones and our pagers, in a time famine, starving for an extra moment, rushing headlong as to the Mad Hatter's tea party, just a step ahead of an avalanche of details. The pace of Congress is not a human pace, and one gets the feeling of the rehearsed, automatic activity of a supernumerary who is not permitted to know the main plot. As we hurry from vote to vote, the most frequently asked question members ask on the floor of the House is: "What are we voting on?" No time to say hello or good-bye, we are already late for our next meeting. We are bombarded with information that will be absolutely meaningless 50 years from now, sapping us of the time we need to do things that will matter 50 years from now.
It is urgent that we require of ourselves a more human pace, a slower, more natural rhythm of human interaction that provides for something more than a superficial presence in relationship to ourselves, our loved ones, and our nation; to take time to think about the America of tomorrow and our place in it, that we may again make great plans. We have to transport our consciousness of America into the future and imagine that which cannot be imagined; we must re-create, summon new forms from the unknown, and draw forth new structures that spring from higher awareness, a greater understanding of ourselves, our nation, and the world. A spiritual dedication and practice of transcendence to create new alternatives can awaken our highest aspirations, can invoke a sense of great purpose, can energize our spiritual capabilities and lead to our own transformation and to the transformation of our nation. How much power has the human heart!
Remember a child's belief in the power of magic, of wizards, of shape shifting. That towering instinct toward transformation is nascent in the human heart. Once joined to the soul's purpose, that instinct lets the human spirit take flight to explore the stars in the heavens within and above us, and we take our place within Washington's apotheosis. It is that instinct that led the Founders to create beyond existing structures of 18th-century thought and fling far into the future a United States built upon hallowed Liberty, Justice, Equality, principles that give America the ability to adapt to an undreamed of future. While we recognize that the Founders participated in a world of exceptional cruelty, with its dependence on the abominable institution of slavery, its disregard of the essential role of women as co- creators, and its appropriation of the land and lives of its Native American sons and daughters, we can still retrieve the highest sentiments of the time. At the same time, we must include the lowest sentiments of our historical experience. The path to the future is now, through truth, reconciliation, and transformation.
Can you hear the reveille of the American Spirit? It calls us forth to remember where we came from as a nation, to reclaim our spiritual heritage and the finest human potential that radiates from it.
On my way to vote, I complete my climb up the stairs of the House of Representatives and pass through doors on which three-dimensional iron figures reveal another reality of our national identity: war. The heavy metal passageway that leads to the floor of the House is a gallery in high relief of grim reminders from the American Revolutionary War, of the clash of arms and the sacrifice of lives to ensure America's survival as a nation. This very House was burned by the British in 1814. On some evenings, a faint, acrid smell (something burnt?!), its origin unknown, haunts the air near the upper entrance to the House.
The Capitol, and all of America, is a panorama of battlefield tributes, exacting such a powerful claim on our national psyche that even in peacetime, even after the demise of the Soviet Union and with it the end of the Cold War, our nation still spends more than $300 billion a year to warranty our preparedness for future fighting. Ghosts gather, blood spirits hover, and our fears float freely when our country's resources are to be allocated.
The searing truth is that in the 20th century, more than 100 million members of the human community, most of them civilian noncombatants, perished in wars. At the dawn of the 21st century, violence seems to be an overarching theme in the world, encompassing personal, group, national, and international conflict. It now extends to the production of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction for use on land and sea, in air and outer space. Real and anticipated conflict is accepted, even glorified, as intrinsic to the human condition, with few questions about whether the structures of thought, word, and deed that we have inherited are relevant to the maintenance, growth, and survival of our entire civilization.
Our national policy dialogue is infected with war metaphors: the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on this or that. Our children are immersed in video war games. Our sports are rife with war talk. Our media often glorify war. How did we as a society develop such an ardor for arms? Our Founders, while providing for the Common Defense, did not envision America as a land of conquistadores. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at the beginning of World War II, encouraged steadfastness among the American people: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." As the war wound down, FDR aspired to ending the beginning of all wars: "Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships, the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace."
As we stand on the threshold of a new millennium, it is time to free ourselves, to jettison our illusions and fears and transform age-old challenges with new thinking. We can conceive of peace as not simply the absence of violence but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity. Of peace, wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions that impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward creating understanding, compassion, and love. We can bring forth new understandings where peace, not war, becomes inevitable. Can we move from wars to end all wars to peace to end all war?
As our fears ossify thought, so our hopes can excite new thinking toward the construction of a new social reality for the new century, to create a new architecture for human relationships and transport its structure directly to our system of government. America can, in the first half of this century, create a cabinet-level Department of Peace. The mission would be to make nonviolence the central organizing principle in our society, advancing human relations in domestic as well as foreign policy. It takes an act of Congress and an act of faith in our transformative capacities to evolve to a condition where violence and war become archaic.
One possessed of a sober understanding of politics and government could fairly challenge such a concept as impractical and hopelessly idealistic since, in the view of some, war is the very invention of politics and government. We look to government to repair the nation, yet our challenges at their core are not necessarily those on which government trains its focus. Our greatest challenges are spiritual at their source: a misunderstanding of power, the heavy burden of unrelieved materialism, fear of death. If all that government does is address symptoms, we will always be dissatisfied with the government. Government itself must be moved to a higher level of thought, to a quickened cognizance of its generative role as a convener of consciousness for the country. Our Founders understood that the material foundations of an enduring democracy rest upon immaterial principles. They knew that our journey here on Earth is to carry spiritual principles into the material world, and in spiritualizing the material, our thoughts, words, and deeds are made holy, and we are elevated with them.
"We must cultivate the science of human relationships," said the noble FDR shortly before he passed away. You are wondering what a Department of Peace might look like. A proposal is being crafted at this very moment, with the help of thousands of people across America, to create a Department of Peace whose domestic application would be to develop policies that address human aggression, domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, and mistreatment of the elderly. It could work to create new policies directed at drug and alcohol abuse. It would lead to a reevaluation of the causes of crime. It could give us a new chance to review failed approaches to punishment that have resulted in more than two million Americans being confined. It should enable the rescue of human lives and the liberation of our society from self-imprisonment. It could analyze present policies, employ field-tested programs, and craft new approaches for dealing with violence in our society: school violence, gang or racial violence, violence against gays and lesbians, and clashes between police and community.
In its international work, the Department of Peace would deal with issues of human security, whether that security is threatened by geographic, religious, ethnic, or class conflicts. It would face the economic threats to human security, from inequities resulting from trade, unequal distribution of wealth, or scarcity of natural resources. It could foster a new consciousness of peace in our society, just as our national consciousness is informed by other structures in the government. It can be done. It starts with our own commitment to peace, to nonviolence in our own lives. The hymn entreats us: "Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me."
There is an intricate, synergistic relationship that exists between the people and their government. The idea of self-government implies that the self and the government are interrelated. We live in the nation and the nation lives in us. In understanding the reciprocity between ourselves and the government, we come to understand the power that we have to move our government, as we have the power to move our own lives. This is not an abstraction. This is an application of the spiritual principles that the Founders and their successors brought to us. We call upon them, as secular saints, for inspiration to help us become more than we are as a nation.
We call upon Washington to reconfirm our nation. We call upon Jefferson to enlighten us. We call upon Lincoln to heal our divisions. We call upon Theodore Roosevelt to embolden us. We call upon Franklin Roosevelt to encourage us. And we call upon the Founding Mothers and their successors to temper us, to nurture us, to make us gentle, and to seek peace as a light within. We ask forgiveness as we call upon our slave ancestors, who built this country from their stolen labor and ruined families. We seek atonement as we ask them for the courage to overcome and to continue the upward quest toward the emancipation of each and every human being. We call upon our Native American ancestors to help us reestablish our relationship with the Great Spirits of the Earth the water, the sky, the wind to give us the wisdom to heal the land to which we all belong. We seek reconciliation with our American Indian brothers and sisters through restoration of their dignity and full opportunity. We can call and they will answer, because time is an illusion and in matters of spirit and energy, the past, the present, and the future are one.
Each of us can lead in this effort to renew America, and to enable this nation to take its rightful place as a nation among nations, a "shining city on a hill" whose light gleams not only from the Capitol Dome against the darkest night, but whose light shines from within its people. We can become as presidents of our own lives by harkening to the words of "America the Beautiful," confirming "thy goal in self-control" to understand the interrelationship between the unfolding of democratic principles in our own lives and the upholding of democratic principles in the life of our nation, to consider that personhood and nationhood is a craft of the spirit. It is how we treat everyone. It is how we speak to one another. It is in affirming the humanity of anyone we may view as an enemy, whether across the street or over the seas, that we assert our own humanity.
None of us will go forward unless we all go forward together, united as Americans we the people, continuing the work of forming a more perfect union, under the watchful eye of the Spirit of America.
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