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

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.

Iraq: A Quartet of Critical Inquiries

By Rep. Thaddeus McCotter


As a person’s word is their bond, a nation’s word is its bond. Once broken, “its word is no good.”

In 2002, with the world – and especially our enemy – watching, America gave its solemn vow to the oppressed Iraqi people we would emancipate them from a tyrant to experience their God-given right to liberty. Over four years later, in Iraq our soldiers and civilians continue striving and sacrificing to honor America’s pledge; but, on the home front, the Left is bent upon breaking America’s promise to liberate the Iraqis, in particular, and forsaking America’s dedication to liberty, in general.

Before acquiescing to this execrable outcome, Americans must demand the Left answer this quartet of critical inquiries regarding Iraq :

1. If America breaks its vow and abandons the Iraqis to be slaughtered, who in the region or the world will trust our word?

2. If America belies its professed commitment to liberty, what can we possibly offer the Middle East ’s – indeed, the world’s – oppressed to turn them away from the enemy and toward us?

3. After Iraq is abandoned, how soon will the Left demand America ’s immediate retreat in the other “war without end” – Afghanistan ?

4. What are the consequences to America if we are defeated in Iraq and Bin-Laden is proven right: “ America is definitely a great power, with an unbelievable military strength and a vibrant economy, but all of these have been built on a very weak and hollow foundation”?

These questions and others will not and can not be answered by the Left. Offering constructive alternatives to and measuring the consequences of national security policies is neither their goal nor inclination. Their contempt for America as the greatest threat to “world peace” precludes it.

Possessed of our sanity, let us provide the answers to these questions.

1. No one.

2. Nothing.

3. Immediately.

4. A war without end.

Should the Left prevail and these answers become bitter realities, present and future generations of Americans will be faced with the dark specter of nuclear armed terrorist states in a war without end against an implacable enemy bent upon our destruction; and, our just God so disposed, the Left will be held to account for betraying the integrity of America’s word in this crucible of our nation’s War for Freedom.

And, make no mistake, we will not escape the history’s inquiry of us:

What did you do to win it?



United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee

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.