Rep. McCotter: Stop Politicians' Taxpayer Funded Junkets to the Communist Olympics

New Bill Will Make Attending the Olympic Opening Ceremonies Illegal for the President, All Government Officials

WASHINGTON D.C. – Today Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) introduced a bill in Congress restricting all government officials and employees from attending the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in communist China. The bill does NOT affect America’s Olympic athletes.

The bill, The Communist Chinese Olympic Accountability Act, is a follow up to a September 11, 2007, letter to President George W. Bush in which Congressman McCotter and a bi-partisan coalition of Members of Congress, state: “We urge you [President Bush] to reconsider your decision to attend the 2008 Beijing Olympics in communist China.”

McCotter commended Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent comments regarding President Bush boycotting the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and acknowledge her long-standing, principled opposition to communist China’s human rights violations. “Hopefully, Speaker Pelosi will be supportive of this bill; and our colleagues will join us in denouncing the reprehensible actions of communist China and the changing the errant decision of the President to attend the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics,” said Rep. McCotter, Chairman of House Republican Policy Committee. (http://policy.house.gov)

“While we applaud the hard work of all the Olympic athletes, President Bush, as the leader of the Free World, must uphold America’s beacon of liberty to the world’s oppressed. This noble cause is harmed through his attendance as a guest of this oppressive communist government,” said McCotter.

“The Communist Chinese Olympic Accountability Act” and the September 2007 letter to the President both provide a partial list of communist China’s offenses, including human rights violations, subjugating Tibet, abetting Sudan’s genocidal regime, persecution of its Chinese citizens for freely exercising religion, enforcement of a one child policy upon its Chinese families, supporting fellow dictatorships, and systematically denying the Chinese people their basic freedoms, among others.

The bill prohibits any individual who is an official, whether elected or appointed, or employee of the Federal Government from attending any segment of the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics Games held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. Importantly, this prohibition does not apply to any member of the United Stated Olympic Team or persons serving in a support capacity.

“President Franklin Roosevelt did not attend the 1936 Berlin Olympics; and President Bush should not attend the Beijing Olympics. In the grand sweep of history, President Bush’s attendance at these games will be an unwelcome and unnecessary stain upon his legacy as a champion of human liberty,” said Rep. McCotter

Cuba Libre!

Today, we herald the dawn of the Cuban people’s ultimate freedom from the communist regime imposed upon them by the murderous Fidel Castro and his gaggle of assassins.

Now, all free peoples must strive to liberate that imprisoned island; ensure this ray of hope is burgeons into freedom; and, ultimately, help the Cuban people bring the Castro brother-butchers and all their despicable ilk to justice.

We will.

Cuba Libre!

The Liberty Alliance: Championing Liberty and Dignity in our Human Community

U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter,
Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee


The poster-child of failed hopes, today’s United Nations (UN) is a global Tammany Hall lethal to the liberty and dignity of our human family.

First, the UN’s membership is stacked against free people. According to Freedom House, of 192 UN member states, 89 are “fully free” and 103 are not. Thus, a solid majority (54%) of member states know liberty directly threatens their survival, which requires the suppression of their own peoples and, through their UN membership, the entire human community.

Yet, since 1945, the U.S. has been the UN’s largest annual contributor. In 2006, American taxpayers forked over $423.5 million in dues (or 22% of the UN’s regular budget) and over $5.3 billion in total to the UN. Still, we and all free people remain the UN’s tyrants’ favorite targets.

Two statistics gauge this dysfunction: Only 46% of the UN’s members are free nations; but the UN’s top ten financial contributors are all free nations.

In our global age, wherein a world condensed by an internet cannot endure half-slave and half-free, we can no longer rely on a debased UN for collective security. With our survival at stake, all free nations must prudently diminish their participation in the UN; and unite in the cause of human dignity and liberty.

We must create a Liberty Alliance.

Transcending the “Community of Democracies,” the Liberty Alliance must be founded upon the self-evident truth all human beings are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and it must be steeped in the wisdom extending liberty to the enslaved will ensure liberty for ourselves.

The Liberty Alliance’s members must free nations. Observer nations must domestically expand their people’s liberty before admission as members. Importantly, member nations diminishing their people’s liberty must be demoted to Observer status and, when necessary, expelled from the Alliance.

The governing structure of the Liberty Alliance shall be determined by its member nations with the objective being the maximization of transparency, equity, and democracy in accordance with the effective expansion of human liberty and dignity. The Alliance, in President Truman’s words, “must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” Thus, through diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural initiatives, the Alliance will empower and emancipate individuals, communities, and emerging free governments from dictatorial rule. Further, the Alliance must not have a military component; and must never infringe upon a member nation’s rights.

The Liberty Alliance’s headquarters shall be sited on the free soil once scarred by colonialism, communism, fascism, world wars, and the Holocaust – Eastern Europe, where, cradled in the intrepid human sprit, liberty’s lamp triumphantly pierced these benighted recesses of evil.

Finally, the Liberty Alliance would not invite the Free World to exit the UN. The U.S. and all free nations should remain in the UN to keep a wary eye on liberty’s enemies. But we must stop paying through the nose to get kicked in our assets. Instead, we and other free nations will pay the UN just as much as does a free-loading tyrant. Free nations’ monies and personnel spared from the UN shall be dedicated to the Liberty Alliance.

Discombobulated global sophisticates will decry the Liberty Alliance as undesirable and impossible. They are overwrought and wrong. Within the Alliance, Americans and all free peoples will remain cemented and steeled by the harmonic bonds of liberty, comity, and duty; and, like our greatest generations of all free nations, we, will not bend, we will not break in our reasoned faith in a future graced by free nations.

Battle of "The Bums"

During their mutual month-long August recesses, wherein public confidence in each has plummeted to record lows, the American Congress (“Our Bums”) is denouncing the Iraqi Parliament (“Their Bums”) as “do nothings.” Further, despite American military progress on the ground in Iraq, Washington claims Baghdad’s failure to meet political benchmarks will doom General Petraeus’ plan for victory.

The premise of this claim is absolutely backwards.

Along Iraq’s bloody path to freedom, the greatest obstacle has been the average Iraqi’s wary neutrality in the battle between the United States’ “Coalition of the Willing” and the insurgents. Today, a nihilistic insurgency has been revealed to offer average Iraqis nothing but subjugation and extermination; in stark contrast, General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is delivering both the eradication of the insurgents and localized reconstruction efforts – i.e., a palpable hope for security and prosperity. Consequently, the true measure of political progress in Iraq is NOT found in its national Parliament; the true measure of political progress in Iraq is occurring in local tribes, towns and provinces where Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.

This Iraqi “election for freedom” is not an intrinsically military development. It is fundamentally a political development complementing and speeding military progress; and hastening the day such individual and local “grassroots” political wins collectively dictate political progress in Baghdad.

Let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how in representative democracies Parliaments and Congresses do not dictate to sovereign citizens; sovereign citizens dictate to Parliaments and Congresses. Thus, in Iraq each citizen in his or her respective tribe, town and province must inform and consent to federal laws being enacted, implemented, and honored; and, when this consent is individually granted in sufficient numbers, Iraq will complete its transformational emancipation from tyranny to liberty.

Further, let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how we cannot abandon Iraq’s fledgling democracy – or any democracy – under terrorist attack. The War for Freedom must be won through ideological, political, economic, diplomatic and – as an ultimate resort – martial means. If the U.S. abandons Iraq’s democracy, we will also abandon our and the entire free world’s inherited legacy of and professed commitment to freedom. If this betrayal of ourselves and the Iraqis occurs, our enemies will be empowered and we will be ideologically disarmed in the face of the enemy. If not liberty, what political principle will a discredited and defeated U.S. promote to turn the Middle East’s oppressed away from Al Qaeda’s extremism?

Come September 15th then, Americans must focus on the true measure of political progress in General Petraeus’ initial strategic assessment – tribal, local, and provincial support for liberty instead of the insurgency; and we must do so cognizant of the truth expressed and proven by prior generations of Americans who, in times of national trial, preserved and promoted our nation’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom: The only way to ensure liberty for ourselves is to extend liberty to the enslaved.

Of course, it would help too, if the collective bums in both the Iraqi Parliament and the American Congress remembered all power in a democracy is vested in its sovereign citizens, not its subservient government.

United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee and one of “Our Bums”

Compassionate Communism

Due to the devotion of Lev Dobriansky and Dr. Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation, on Tuesday, June 12, 2007, the Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The memorial is modeled on the statute of Lady Liberty which inspired the Chinese students and their fellow citizens in Tiananmen Square, and symbolized their hope to realize their God-given and inalienable right to freedom. And, as is indelibly etched in the most ignoble annals of history, it was beneath this statue of Lady Liberty the communist Chinese government’s totalitarian stranglehold tightened and these human beings’ cries to breathe free were choked from their throats.

Truly, then, the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial was a fitting forum for the President of the United States – the leader of the Free World – to help commemorate the event. Inexplicably, especially since the communist killers who executed the slaughter in Tiananmen Square remain firmly enthroned upon the shoulders of those students and citizens’ corpses – the President did not call for America and the entire Free World to finish the job and liberate those who still suffer and die under communism.

Instead, the President took a victory lap replete with historical and ideological pitfalls portending a perilous present and future for all free people.

First, the President made a curious and ridiculous distinction between communist regimes: “Yet, until now, our Nation's Capital had no monument to the victims of imperial communism, an ideology that took the lives of an estimated 100 million innocent men, women and children.” [Bold italics mine.] Was the President wrongly implying “imperial communism” is distinct from some new brand of “compassionate communism?” Was the President wrongly implying the Memorial is not also a testament to those killed by that parochial politician Pol Pot or by Stalin when he was content to bloodily build socialism in one country? Was he also wrongly implying the current butchers of Beijing are acceptable communists because they are not “imperialists”? (Just because a regime is utilizing means other than overt martial aggression to attack our national security – like, say Iran – does NOT mean the regime is no longer a threat to our national security.) So too, was the President further wrongly implying the Castro’s barbarous regime is no longer bent upon exporting communism throughout the world and allying with our mortal enemies?

This leads to the President’s egregious omission. Yes, the President does partially list the nations where communism has murdered innocent victims (although he neglects to mention Cuba in anything but a passing passive reference to “Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny,” as if Castro’s communist regime never actively killed Cubans). But the President does NOT list those nations where communism still oppresses our fellow human beings. Why? Because the President evidently feels communism is no longer a threat to the United States of America and every free human being.

To wit, this characteristically past tense remark about, one must assume, “imperial communism” and its twentieth century victims: “She [Lady Liberty] reminds us of the victims of communism, and also of the power that overcame communism…and she reminds us that when an ideology kills tens of millions of people, [the ideology] still ends up being vanquished…”
Uh, Mr. President, as you spoke, communism was alive and subjugating over a billion people. And the victims of communism keep mounting. (As the Falun Gong/ Falun Dafa members protesting communist China at the event tried in vain to convey to him.)

So what did the President have to say to the current victims of communism when, at the tail end of his speech, he ever so diplomatically admitted communism still might exist? To wit: “May those who continue to suffer under communism find their freedom.” So this is how the West leaves the field when the Cold War is only half finished, and our victory is daily endangered by former KGB Lt. Col. (nee communist?) Putin. Given his nation’s affinity for such occasions, President Chirac would at least have proffered a more stately surrender.

Still, in fairness, the President does not argue all is well, because terrorism has replaced communism as a grave threat to our existence. This argument errantly equates the advent of a new danger with the end of an old danger. It would be akin to President Franklin Roosevelt asserting fascism was for all intents and purposes finished after D-Day, and the nation should focus only on imperial Japan. And, in fact, it is the mistake made by the Greeks who, after defeating Persia and fighting amongst themselves, only remembered Macedonia was a menace upon becoming one of their conquests.

For those who think this a trifling matter, consider these historical contrasts. First, President Lincoln endured a civil war to emancipate the slaves and lead our nation to a new birth of freedom; this Republican President articulates to the remaining slaves of communism, “Good luck, Tiger, you’re on your own.” Secondly, while President Reagan told the “evil empire” to “tear down this wall,” our current leader of the Free World cannot tell the (communist) Chinese to stop manipulating their currency. One can go on citing similar historical comparisons, but it would be sadistic.

Suffice to say, upon this noble and necessary commemoration of the victims of communism, I am appalled the President failed to issue a clarion call for the American and all free peoples to summon the courage and moral clarity to end the communist regimes extant in our midst, and from North Korea to Cuba to China emancipate a billion people from the spiritual and material shackles of this contemptible lie.

Why? Because it is obviously too easy for people to delude themselves into hoping we have reached the end of history and, thus, to view communism as no longer a danger to our free republic and every democracy. Because it is imperative to recognize the West has but won the European theater of the Cold War’s battle between freedom and communism. Because it is a matter of our own national survival to remember we as a free people were, are, and must remain a beacon of hope to all humanity; and how, as a free people, we bear the burden to expand liberty to our fellow human beings, for they are as equally God's children as are we.

So I humbly suggest to the President of the United States how “the bitter twilight struggle” between freedom and communism is not over. How it is not time for a victory lap, but a time for the reaffirmation we – a free people housed in a nation conceived in liberty – will continue our historic moral mission to emancipate all humanity from this evil ideology. How America is a revolutionary country by birth, and must ever so remain. And how, if we ever forget this verity of and our duty to liberty, we will meanly lose our legacy and betray its promise to our posterity and all humanity.

Finally, I further submit for the President’s consideration the truth we can only nobly and fully honor the memory of the victims of communism by remaining champions of human freedom until tyranny – be it communist, terrorist, or any other malignant manifestation of man’s inhumanity to man – is eradicated from our earth; our world experiences a new birth of freedom; and a future President is spared the pain of commemorating a memorial to the victims of twenty-first century communism.