Excerpts from Margaret Chase Smith's Declaration of Conscience speech
Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership either in the legislative branch or the executive branch of our government....
I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.
Mr. President, I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American....
I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.
I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation....
As a Republican, I say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the Republican party faces a challenge today that is not unlike the challenge which it faced back in Lincoln's day. The Republican party so successfully met that challenge that it emerged from the Civil War as the champion of a united nation — in addition to being a party which unrelentingly fought loose spending and loose programs.
Today our country is being psychologically divided by the confusion and the suspicions that are bred in the United States Senate to spread like cancerous tentacles of "know nothing, suspect everything" attitudes....
The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear....
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
— The right to criticize.
— The right to hold unpopular beliefs.
— The right to protest.
— The right of independent thought.
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in....
Copy the Story Link
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
17 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump doesn't have to quit UNESCO again because we never lawfully rejoined
President Trump recently announced that the United States was quitting the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for the third time. This is good news – UNESCO has championed gender ideology in education, discriminatory DEI policies, and the entire litany of woke doctrines. It has also worked to erase Jewish history in the Holy Land. But the administration did not need to bother with formally withdrawing from the treaty — from a constitutional perspective, the U.S. hasn't been a member at least since Trump first quit it in 2017. When Biden sought to rejoin the Paris-based agency in 2023, he neglected to seek authorization from Congress. No one made a big deal of it then, but it means that, for domestic law purposes, the U.S. never actually rejoined. This is an important point with implications for numerous international organizations, especially as the administration sets out on an agenda of U.N. reform. Membership in international organizations was not supposed to be a political revolving door. Congress authorizes membership at the outset. After the U.S. leaves, a whole new congressional authorization must be obtained by any president wishing to rejoin. Under the Constitution, the president can only bring the country into a treaty with the 'consent' of two-thirds of the Senate. That is a substantial hurdle, and deliberately so: Commitments to foreign countries can be harder to pull out of than domestic ones. They can become a way of imposing obligations on the country that are then out of reach of the democratic process. In the 20th century, presidents have often relied on the approval of a majority of both Houses instead, a dubious practice but now widely followed. When the U.S. first joined UNESCO in 1946 (and the World Health Organization in 1948), President Truman was acting pursuant a law passed by both Houses authorizing him to do so. But Congress did not reauthorize Biden's reentry to UNESCO. Instead, he treated the 1946 authorization as a lifetime membership, when in fact it was only a one-time pass. If the U.S. quit a treaty that the Senate had ratified — say the NATO treaty — then a decision to rejoin would be subject to a new requirement of advice and consent. Congressional authorization is a stand-in for Senate ratification and should be subject to the same rules. Consider a parallel case: If a president fires a senate-confirmed appointee, and he or a subsequent president wishes to return him to the same post, no one would argue that he could do so simply on the grounds that the Senate had previously confirmed him. Indeed, Andrew Jackson's Attorney General resigned from his position, and was then reappointed to it — only to be rejected by the Senate. As a statutory matter, the 1946 agreement on UNESCO allowed the president to 'accept membership' — not accept, and accept, and accept again. If a congressional authorization is good for infinite rounds of quitting and rejoining, it makes getting out of international agreements harder than getting in – exactly the opposite of what the Framers intended. The argument of perpetual authorization was invented by Jimmy Carter, who purported to rejoin the International Labor Organization in 1980 based on a 1934 authorization. President Bush neglected to seek congressional approval when he rejoined UNESCO in 2002, nearly two decades after Reagan quit. Neither instance attracted much attention, and two modern actions do not prove a constitutional rule. There is a good argument for the Trump administration having withdrawn from UNESCO as if it were a member — to avoid any doubt or subsequent quibbling. But the administration should clarify that it is 'quitting' only out of an excess of caution, and does not see the U.S. as properly joined, which is consistent with its nonpayment of any dues. To avoid abuse by future administrations, Congress should repeal the antiquated authorizations for UNESCO and WHO, which Trump also announced withdrawal from. If a subsequent president wants to rejoin, he should have to sell it to Congress on the organization's existing records, not the hopes and dreams of the 1940s.
Fast Company
17 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Newsom and Cuomo are using social media to try and replicate Mamdani's appeal. They're missing the point
According to Sun Tzu, in order to know your enemy, you must become your enemy. Some politicians might be taking that advice a little too literally, though. Zohran Mamdani's notably deft use of social media helped lead his well-run mayoral primary campaign to victory in June—and it may have inspired some recent pivots from other politicos. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is now taking a kitchen-sink approach to replicating his mayoral opponent's social media magic, while California Governor Gavin Newsom has taken to mimicking Donald Trump in an ongoing performance art piece on one of his X accounts. Neither seems to have a broader strategy beyond capturing attention. Memes and mimicking online Fresh off of copying Mamdani's distinct video style upon reentering the mayoral race as an Independent, Cuomo is now trying to flex his own social media fluency, with memes and a reply-heavy X account. In between the rash of posts attacking his opponent, Cuomo has been interacting with many of his followers and posting the occasional clunky meme from The Office. Apparently, this is just the beginning. Jason Levin, whose bio claims he builds 'software for meme marketing and memetic warfare,' took credit for Cuomo's memefication on Monday. In a thread posted to X, he recounted how his first meme for Cuomo hit 5.1 million views on the platform, with a triumphant tone more befitting someone who has just received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. 'We are entering a golden age of meme'fied politics,' he wrote in one entry in the thread, urging his followers to take up arms (read: memes), and help 'save NYC.' Meanwhile, Governor Newsom also seems to believe we have 'entered a golden age of meme'fied politics.' Since the beginning of August, he has been taking a punchier approach on X, with the occasional clunky meme from The Office. The effort peaked last week, though, when Newsom began an elaborate trolling campaign against Trump, in which his tweets favor the president's all-caps, nickname-forward, syntactically challenged, self-worshipful style. In an effort to show he's willing to stand up to Trump—or, let's be real, more likely in an effort to lay further groundwork for his inevitable 2028 presidential bid—Newsom is acting on social media as though he were a Good Terminator sent back in time to stop the Bad one. Whether these efforts have had any meaningful impact on Trump is debatable, but what is beyond dispute is that this social media strategy has earned Newsom loads of attention. Cuomo trolls desperately for votes The attention a politician generates with memes or trolling, however, is not necessarily relevant if they don't match it with something more interesting to say. Social media fluency, after all, is not political fairy dust. In 2025, we're well past the point where a politician using memes, in and of itself, suggests youthful savviness. Michael Bloomberg went all in on the best memes money can buy in the 2020 election, and failed to move the needle one iota. A decade into Trump's political era, everyone has already been to this circus and seen these clowns. What they want instead are leaders. Throughout his campaign, Mamdani used social media to highlight key issues around the central theme of affordability, reveal his personality, and showcase transparency. His various accounts built off the organizing prowess of his ground game to make his progressive ideas more widely palatable and to give them moral heft. His posts were generally earnest and informative, and slyly packaged in smart experiments like his daylong walk across the entirety of Manhattan. Now that he has won the primary, his social media has an earned sense of triumphalism—as in a recent video filmed backstage at a Wu-Tang concert at Madison Square Garden —along with a whole lot of smoke for his opponent, Cuomo. If Mamdani has gotten a major boost from his social media usage—and he undoubtedly has—it's because it seems like a natural extension of the candidate himself. All that Cuomo is doing with his flailing efforts at being epic on social media (something Elon Musk has proved is no pathway to popularity) is reveal his desperation for capturing attention. That thirstiness leaves room in his tent for Trump supporters, like his new meme contributor, along with Trump himself, whose support Cuomo is actively, openly courting (despite him being less popular among conservative voters than both Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and Mamdani). Posting—shockingly—is not politics As for Newsom, the best that can be said of his new social media trolling persona is that it's drawing attention to the hypocrisy of Trump's supporters in the media. Those anchors on Fox News who find Newsom's schtick 'childish' and 'unbecoming of a leader,' for instance, should indeed have to answer for why they don't attribute those traits to the guy Newsom is imitating. But the problem is that all this trolling is just empty calories. Newsom's Bizarro Trump act is an attention-getting spectacle. It's a one-note comedy routine, not a form of leadership. He could keep this up every day for the next three years and it would never make more of a material impact than his recent pledge to redraw the district maps in California, in order to match a gerrymandering effort underway in Texas. (It's worth noting that this issue is what initially kicked off Newsom's ongoing Trump impersonation.)
E&E News
17 minutes ago
- E&E News
Electric school buses hit pothole after major supplier goes bankrupt
Even Republicans have tolerated one Biden-era climate program: a $5 billion effort to buy electric school buses and give kids' lungs a break from diesel pollution. But now a major bus supplier has collapsed — leaving school districts with technology that's hard to fix. Lion, an electric truck- and bus-maker based in Quebec, is in bankruptcy after selling roughly 3,400 buses in the United States. Last month, its new investors notified alarmed school districts that they would not honor warranties. Advertisement 'They ran properly for approximately two weeks, then we started getting error messages,' said Andrew Dolloff, the superintendent of schools in Yarmouth, Maine, about the district's two Lion buses.
