has enslaved us, yet we still fail to do anything about it.
In other words, we still don’t know how to put morality ahead of politics, science and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions—if they are to be moral—is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly judged.
The interpreter or mediator between us and this higher authority is what is traditionally referred to as human conscience.
If I subordinate my political behavior to this imperative mediated to me by my conscience, I can’t go far wrong. If on the contrary I were not guided by this voice, not even 10 presidential schools with 2,000 of the best political scientists in the world could help me.
This is why I ultimately decided—after resisting for a long time—to accept the burden of political responsibility.
I am not the first, nor will I be the last, intellectual to do this. On the contrary, my feeling is that there will be more and more of them all the time. If the hope of the world lies in human consciousness, then it is obvious that intellectuals cannot go on forever avoiding their share of responsibility for the world and hiding their distaste for politics under an alleged need to be independent.
It is easy to have independence in your program and then leave others to carry that program out. If everyone thought that way, pretty soon no one would be independent.
I think that you Americans should understand this way of thinking. Wasn’t it the best minds of your country, people you could call intellectuals, who wrote your famous Declaration of Independence, your Bill of Human Rights and your Constitution and who—above all—took upon themselves the practical responsibility for putting them into practice? The, worker from Branik in Prague that your President referred to in his State of the Union message this year is far from being the only person in Czechoslovakia, let alone in the world, to be inspired by those great documents. They inspire us all. They inspire us despite the fact that they are over 200 years old. They inspire us to be citizens.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that, “Governments are instituted among Men deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,” it was a simple and important act of the human spirit.
What gave meaning to that act, however, was the fact that the author backed it up with his life. It was not just his words, it was his deeds as well.
I will end where I began: history has accelerated. I believe that once again, it will be the human mind that will notice this acceleration, give it a name, and transform those words into deeds.
Thank you.
[Applause, the Members rising.]
At 12 o’clock and 14 minutes p.m, the President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, accompanied by the committee of escort, retired from the Hall of the House of Representatives.
The Doorkeeper escorted the invited guests from the Chamber in the following order.
The members of the President’s Cabinet.
The Ambassadors, Ministers, and charges d’affaires of foreign governments.
JOINT MEETING DISSOLVED
The SPEAKER. The purpose of the joint meeting having been completed, the Chair declares the joint meeting of the two Houses now dissolved. Accordingly, at 12 o’clock and 18 minutes p.m., the joint meeting of the two Houses was dissolved.
The Members of the Senate retired to their Chamber.
ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER
The SPEAKER. The House will continue in recess until the hour of 1 p.m.
AFTER RECESS
The recess having expired, the House was called to order by the Speaker pro tempore [Mr. Mazzoli] at 1 o’clock and 3 minutes p.m.
PRINTING OF PROCEEDINGS HAD DURING RECESS
Mr. NAGLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the proceedings had during the recess be printed in the Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Iowa?
There was no objection.
(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, freedom’s bell rang today on the floor of this House. If we might refer to Vaclav Havel as theThomas Jefferson of Czechoslovakia, we would be correct. This poet-playright-philosopher President of Czechoslovakia spoke of the values of free peoples.
He spoke of the values that our American forefathers spread before the world and before our own country. President Havel thanked us all for the young men, the young women, and the mothers and fathers who made sacrifices to preserve and protect freedom.
He talked about Woodrow Wilson, that President who during the first World War led America to make the world safe for democracy. Perhaps he failed in the effort to make it safe for democracy, but President Wilson did in fact spread the idea of democracy that Jefferson had so eloquently articulated.
And it was President Truman who, after the Second World War, said that we will stand and defend freedom, that we will not allow the Iron Curtain to be spread across Europe.
It was that courage and that leadership from Jefferson, Wilson, and Truman that has stood democracy and freedom in good stead and led to President Havel’s speech today.
John Kennedy went to Berlin and he said, “Ich bin ein Berliner” and identified every American with freedom and democracy and the human values of which President Havel spoke today.
THE INSPIRATION OF PRESIDENT HAVEL’S WORDS
(Mr. CONTE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. CONTE. Mr. Speaker, today, we were privileged in this exalted hall to listen to one of the great moral leaders of our time, Vaclav Havel, the quiet playwright, the citizen leader, the President of Czechoslovakia.
His message was inspired as he described for us these “extraordinary times * * * which leave us no time even to be astonished.”
The sweet sounds of his mother tongue were sweet sounds indeed. Not only did he lift our collective spirits on what public service should be all about, he reached an even higher plane, in my opinion.
In all of those sweet sounds, there was not one request for money for his own nation. It is like a revolution within the revolution.
Mr. Speaker, in my 32 years in the House of Representatives, I have heard many addresses before joint sessions. But I have never heard a more inspiring and powerful one than we heard today. I almost felt as if I was in the presence of our own Founding Fathers. There was a reverence in this room, I don’t know how else to describe it.
With leadership like Vaclav Havel, we can look ahead with hope and confidence in a better, more moral world in our future.
