been since you were last threatened with political reprisals if you do not vote for this measure or that which you knew was unwise and perhaps even vicious. Those things have jammed through evil legisÎation.

Now, it is against this that the public desperately needs that those particular legislators who are not vulnerable to that kind of pressure be left free to expose the inequities of these bills.

And there is where this gag-rule censorship would do its evil work. Whenever one of these things comes up supported by organized minority pressure groups, it is most necessary that those things be examined very carefully and very thoroughly. You have got to look into these things. Who are the forces, what are the motives behind that kind of a bill? What advantage do its supporters seek to get by this bill? What effect is it going to have upon the rest of the country and upon those who have some reason to oppose it? What are the basic philosophies of government involved here? Is one side or the other seeking to go out of proper constitutional bounds?

All of those things need to be thoroughly dragged out into the light of day, and no man living can do that in 1 hour's time.

Now, of these particular bills or resolutions, Senate Resolution No. 21 would allow gag rule censorship to be applied by just 25 votes out of the 96 Senators—and even less if some of those present failed to vote, which may very well happen. Some of those present may be under a pairing agreement. Yet their presence counts to make up a quorum. Some of them may just not have the courage to stand up and be counted, and may not vote. So that even less than 25 votes can deny the American people the right to have these things dragged out into the light of day.

Senate Resolutions 17, 30, and 32 would impose this gag rule by only 33 votes-and, again, less if some if those present failed to vote. Senate Resolutions 19 and 28, which are the least obnoxious of the lot, require a bare majority vote to apply a gag rule.

But I want to say this: When any proposed legislation is so vicious and unfair that 49 percent of the Senators are opposed to it, that is just the time when gag rule is most dangerous. That is the thing that needs to be thoroughly exposed until nobody votes on it in ignorance, until nobody can hide behind the statement, "Well, I didn't know; nobody brought that up before I voted."

You are the only guardians left of the liberties of the American people.

The American Constitution and the laws made under it in the past have made us the greatest nation in the world. And the same people who are constantly making their slimy and slanderous attacks upon it are the very same ones who came here fleeing from the other nations of the world, coming here because this was the finest thing God has ever permitted to develop on this earth. They got here in every respect conditions superior to anything they had anywhere else.

But they come here and they crab and they quibble and they complain; and this does not suit them, and that does not suit them; and they want it changed.

Now, American constitutional liberties are not going to be lost by going awfully slow on making changes. We have had these liberties, and they have made us the greatest Nation that ever existed. It is the

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unwise change, the hasty change, under the drive of pressure groups, that threatens American liberty.

And there is now only one safeguard against it, and that is the thorough exposure of these things. When you apply gag-rule censorship, you have destroyed the last hope for the safety of the American people.

You Members of the Senate have to preserve your own liberties in order to preserve ours. And if for any reason of political expediency, to satisfy demands of noisy and threatening minority groups, you permit this liberty to be taken away, just remember this: When you permit the liberties of the American people to be taken away, your own liberties go with it. You are part of the Nation. You fare no better than it does.

When you allow minority group pressure to cause you to forge chains to bind other people's liberties, they fasten on your on wrists at the same time.

The people who would destroy the temple of American liberty by these means should remember that Samson himself perished when he pulled down a temple over him. Anybody who tries to undermine the structure of what we have can only involve himself in the common ruin of us all.

And I urge you do not permit any form of censorship.

Now, a great deal is said by those who are mostly uninformed on the subject about the terrible evils of so-called filibuster. Under the rule XXII just as it stands, the Senate has ample power to protect itself against any real abuse of the privilege of free debate on its floor. If there is a real abuse of it, party lines are not going to measure the vote. Senators rise above that when you get an instance of actual abuse of it. They can halt it any time under rule XXII.

But when you permit just those who are most vulnerable to pressure to be the ones to destroy the right of freedom of debate of the others, you do a grave disservice, not just to the Senate, but to the United States.

Senator TALMADGE. Any questions?

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Comparet, could you tell us a little bit about your organization, how big it is, where it is located?

Mr. COMPARET. The Citizens' Congressional Committee

Senator TALMADGE. May I interrupt at this time? I have another meeting, and Senator Javits will act for the committee.

Mr. COMPARET. Yes, sir.

Senator TALMADGE. I beg to be excused, and my apologies to you, Mr. Comparet, and the remaining witnesses.

Mr. COMPARET. Thank you, sir.

The Citizens' Congressional Committee is really a-I do not know what you would say is the correct word-subdivision or subsidiary of the Christian Nationalist Crusade.

Senator JAVITS. Who is the head of that?

Mr. COMPARET. Gerald L. K. Smith. It is a nationwide organization.

Senator JAVITS. What is your function with the Citizens' Congressional Committee?

Mr. COMPARET. I am attorney for the Christian Nationalist Crusade, and the Citizens' Congressional Committee, being a subdivision of that, I am its attorney.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much, Mr. Comparet.

Mr. COMPARET. The Christian Nationalist Crusade is a political committee, organized as such.

Senator JAVITs. Thank you very much.

Mr. COMPARET. Yes, sir.

Senator JAVITS. We appreciate your testimony.

Is there anything you want to put in the record, Mr. Comparet? Mr. COMPARET. I left with Mr. Langdon West a written copy of my statement that, for time limits, I have had to abbreviate.

Senator JAVITS. Very well.

Mr. COMPARET. I would like the written one included in the record. Senator JAVITS. It shall be so included, without objection.

Mr. COMPARET. Thank you, sir.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Comparet is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF BERTRAND L. COMPARET, REPRESENTING CITIZENS' CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE ON PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO SENATE STANDING RULE XXII

Mr. Chairman and Honorable Senators, I am against all of the proposed amendments to standing rule XXII. This means nothing more than my own opinion, unless I state my reasons for this opposition. I assure you that you will find that they all have a bearing on the undesirability of the amendments. The proposed change can only be understood in the light of the existing situation. This shows that the amendments would destroy the Senate's greatest value to the American people-its capacity to guard their ancient liberties.

I wonder how many people realize that the United States is now undergoing actual revolution? Not violent revolution, overthrowing a government in a day or a week, but revolution by treachery and hypocrisy, leaving the outward shell of a government emptied of all its original principles and refilled with alien purposes masked under the old forms; destroying the American traditions and freedoms which made this Nation great; and by doing this by degrees, over a period of years, escaping recognition for what it is.

To be revolution, it need not be violent. What is revolution? It is only the substitution of a new order in place of the old, but accomplished by means other than the honest and lawful amendment of the Constitution. While this can be done by violence, it is also done more easily and more effectively by subversion from within than by violence from without. It is against this that the unfettered power of every Senator is most needed.

Socialists have been unable to gain power under their own name; but they have found that all they really need is to infiltrate and take over control of old and respected political parties. We need not speculate about their intentions or their methods: We have our first actual example of the successful use of this technique in England, when the Liberal Party was taken over by them. They organized a compact, well-controlled bloc of leftwing, Socialist-Communist votes; then they offered the support of this bloc to the Liberal Party in return for its support of one of their principles. The nasty word "socialism" was carefully avoided: They called themselves the Labor Party, and carefully advanced socialistic principles, one at a time, under the names of "Economic planning" and "Welfare reforms." By their cooperation, the Liberal Party voting strength was increased, so liberals swallowed the bait-and were hooked. Thereafter they feared to lose the added voting strength of the Socialists; but at each election the price of Socialist support came higher-adoption of another Socialist principle; and they paid that price to keep the Socialist vote in line. The much larger Liberal Party was now the helpless prisoner of the minority Labor Party; the tail wagged the dog. By its success in promoting socialism under welfare disguise, the Labor Party was finally able to absorb and discard the Liberal Party. When they came into power, after World War II, they put these principles into more complete effect, with disastrous results to both the prosperity and the freedom of the British people. You know of their nationalization of several major industries-the ones which control all others—and that these nationalized industries thereafter operated at a ruinous loss, paid for by the American taxpayer. But this was not the worst.

As always when Socialist planners take power, tyranny and compulsion became the normal and invariable means of enforcing the plans. British workmen found laws prohibited them from changing jobs without Government consent; they could be ordered to work in those industries which Government felt most needed them-and imprisoned for refusal to obey. British farmers found themselves assigned production quotas of specified crops, which they must meet under penalty of condemnation of their farms, which would thereafter be operated as a state farm under Government-appointed managers. True, the Labor Party was voted out of office before very man Britons were jailed for violation of these laws; but the power was there, and was being used. Now a similar group is using the same technique on us.

In the United States, the same strategy was successful-up to the point where our Constitution interposed a barrier to complete socialization. I need not review for you how a motley collection of Socialist-Communist phony liberals took over control of the respected Democratic Party, and made that once stanch champion of States rights and individual liberty, abandon all its historic principles and spawn many schemes for Government regulation of nearly every phase of life (each one complete with reports, taxes, and hordes of bureaucratic inspectors and commissions)-all this as the price of obtaining the Socialist-Communist vote. They have become the helpless prisoner of their minorities. Now the Republican Party has been captured by the same strategy of inducing it to bid for the same leftwing vote; until this has reached the point where the most truthful and objective criticism of the Republican administration made at the 1956 Democratic National Convention was that voiced by Congressman Rayburn, who pointed out that the Republicans had promised us a bold new approach to the Nation's problems, yet had changed almost nothing of Roosevelt's New Deal system.

The result is even more dangerous here than in England, for they have here deprived the great American majority of any party to represent them: we have no opposition party to offer the public a choice of opposing principles. In 1956, either Presidential candidate could have run on the other's platform, and no one would have known the difference-for there was no difference save in the words used to make the same appeals to the same minorities. The majorities of both parties-an enormous majority between them-have no voice for the preservation of their old liberties. Under this clever control of both parties, the way is open to the Socialist revolution whichever party is nominally in power.

Part of this Socialist revolution is the class and race warfare they are so desperately fanning into flame. By propaganda on which someone is spending millions of dollars, a certain class, a certain race, is persuaded that it is oppressed and downtrodden. The wicked falsity of this propaganda would be apparent to anyone who took the time to think: there is not another nation in the world where the highest third of their population fares as well as the lowest third of ours. But who can find time to think, amid the constant din of newspaper, radio, and television propaganda pouring out the same ceaseless lie that every American principle which has made us great, which has brought us more liberty, more prosperity, more education, more of the comforts of life than any other nation in history has even aspired to-these principles, they tell us, have produced only misery and oppression. Various admittedly minority groups are thus goaded into destroying one or another of the constitutional liberties which are the only safeguard of us all.

This is just one part of the socialist revolutionary plan. The next step is to jam through the legislative department multitudes of unwise laws to lead us, step by step, down the road to socialism-which is only the front door to communism. I need not remind Senators or Congressmen of the pressures brought upon them daily by organized minorities which seek to dictate to the great American majority. How many days-or hours-has it been since you were last threatened with political reprisals if you did not vote for some law which you knew to be unwise and dangerous? Some of these minorities (who admittedly speak not as Americans, but as separate, antagonistic groups, distinct from and hostile to the American majority) wield terrible power through their control of money and their influence over newspapers and radio by means of their power to withdraw advertising from any newspaper or radio station which does not surrender to their censorship and slanting of news. Laws demanded by them are always to advance the separate interests of their own group at the expense of all the rest of us. Many legislators are put on the spot by such demands from special-interest pressure groups whom they fear to oppose, and disastrously unwise laws will be enacted unless those members who are not vulnerable to such pressure are left free to effectively expose and fight them.

For a long time, our governmental theory of checks and balances kept us from falling under a minority tyranny, the same as that in Russia. The lust for power is always strongest in those who are least worthy to have it; and power always gravitates into the hands of the most ruthless and unscrupulous. All power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In theory, we have prevented the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch of government by making each a watchdog over the others. The legislative department is prevented from usurping power by (1) the Executive's veto power, and (2) the judicial department's power to adjudge a statute unconstitutional. The execu tive department could be (but rarely is) held in check by (1) the legislative department's control of the public purse and (2) its power of impeachment, and (3) sometimes by the judicial power to rule an Executive order unconstitutional. But no effective control as yet been exercised over the Supreme Court's flagrant usurpation of power to make new laws under the guise of judicial decision. In theory, the check on this is the legislative department's power of impeachment; in practice there are not enough legislators who have the courage or integrity to use it; so it is a dead letter-really a danger, because it lulls us with a promise of protection which does not really exist.

Until recently, the socialist revoltion by subversion was held in check by our Constitution. But the Constitution does not enforce itself: We enjoy only such constitutional rights as the courts enforce. And there the revolutionists found the weak point in our national armor: Subvert the Supreme Court, and all other parts of the revolution follow almost automatically. Subversion of the Constitution is more easily accomplished, and more disastrously complete, when done by 9 men in black robes than by 90,000 men in black masks. Indeed, the Supreme Court is now too impatient to wait for subversion by legislation: It wants to lead the way to the rosy new world of socialism. Citing as their principal authority a leftwing alien who has called our Constitution a plot against the common people, they have destroyed constitutional rights of the States which their more honorable predecessors have upheld for two generations and they do this on the specious ground that "we can't turn the clock back to 1896" to follow their own Court's previous decisions on the same point If this is good constitutional law, then what will you say when they next decide that they "can't turn the clock back to 1791" to uphold the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, right to jury trial, and the rest of the Bill of Rights? You cannot afford to be complacent about this, no matter what promises or threats you have received from minority groups. The chains you help forge for another you will soon feel on your own wrists. Already, all the evil blackmail of minority group pressure has forced through the House of Representatives a law embodying that historic instrument of tyranny, government by injunction, without right to jury trial. With this will surely come its inevitable result-all the infamous practices of the ancient court of the star chamber, which enforced its evil rule in the same manner. But be assured that the Supreme Court will uphold this, because it is a phase of the socialist revolution: They will not hesitate to turn the clock back to 1496 for that purpose.

You cannot look to the President to protect us from this danger. In the first place, even if he were not under the same pressures, his constitutional power is not sufficient for that purpose. And in the second place, the American tradition has always been against rule by the strong man, the man on horseback. When we reach the point where our salvation must come from that source, we will have already lost everything. The Senate must remain the defender of our liberties.

American liberties cannot be lost by retaining the same constitutional rights we have known from our beginning, the rights which made us great, enlightened, and free. The danger is in hasty, unwise change. When the real majority of the people themselves want a change, it can be done readily and effectively by amendment of the Constitution. But the socialist revolutionaries know that the people would never vote for their schemes: That is why they never propose honest constitutional amendment, but always the backdoor entry of their revolution by hypocrisy-giving lip service to the Constitution, while destroying the heart of it by interpretation which perverts every principle of it to serve their alien philosophy.

The United States Senate is now the last remaining agency which can guard our liberties. Its historic purpose has never been the hasty rubber-stamp adoption of every unwise law by which minority pressure groups seek special advantages for themselves: It has always been the opposite to prevent the passage of