I just retired after serving 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and 16 years before that as a lawyer and Judge. Of all the great men and women with whom I have worked during my career, Walter Jones was one of the best. There is greater turnover in elective office than ever before,...
Author: John J. Duncan (John J. Duncan)
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Last Speech on the Floor of the House
December 21, 2018 Mr. Speaker: Too many of our leaders seem to want to be modern-day Winston Churchills and think of themselves as great war leaders. They are far too eager to go to war and far too willing to stay in a war after it is started. But the American people do not want...
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Feds: Stop “Helping”
Student-loan debt in the United States is now $1.48 trillion. That incredible sum is a heavy drag on the economy and a burden on young people. And federal intervention in education is the cause. It wasn’t always this way. In June 1965, I began working as a salesman at the Sears store in Knoxville, receiving...
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Reason Cecil’s Grocery
Almost two years ago my wife and I were driving home after having dinner in a Knoxville restaurant with former Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist and his wife. It was the Monday night before Thanksgiving, and I decided to call my then 90-year-old Uncle Joe, a retired judge, to see if he and my aunt wanted...
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Lost in Iraq: The Election, Republicans, and Conservatives
In one of the most memorable lines in American political history, Joseph Welch, the patrician Boston lawyer, asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?” Traditional conservatives should be asking the so-called neoconservatives if they have no sense of shame. In the pages of Vanity Fair, on various television interviews, and in other...
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A Better Way
On April 14, the front-page headline of USA Today read, “More say U.S. focus should be home.” The story cited a USA Today/Gallup poll that found that nearly half of Americans thought the United States “Should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can on their own.” Similarly,...
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A Homogenized America
In late January, I led a nine-member congressional delegation on a whirlwind trip to Switzerland, Poland, Rumania, Kosovo, and Morocco. In Bern, at the Embassy Country Team Briefing, we were told that 90 percent of the Swiss were opposed to our occupation of Iraq. In Morocco, our ambassador happily told us that pro-American feelings had...
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In Praise of Accents
A few years ago, sitting on the floor of the U.S. House with my friend Rep. Jim Walsh of Syracuse, I said of the member who was speaking: “Curt’s dyed his hair.” Jim looked at me, very seriously, and said: “Curt’s dad is here?” People who grew up in East Tennessee, as I did, are...
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An Unconservative Foreign Policy
The request for an additional $87 billion for our operation in Iraq proves once again that U.S. policy there is anything but conservative. The request includes $5.7 billion for a new electric-power system; $3.7 billion to improve water and sanitation; and $856 million to upgrade and repair three airports, rail lines, and phone service. Other...
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Looming Large
War with Iraq loomed large as I was flying home to my district on February 6, reading glowing reports in the Washington Times of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations the day before. Then, I turned the page and read these words from Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew: “I’m hearing a...
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The Only Job That Pays Well
The Federal Government is the only industry in which employees get more money—and raises and bonuses—for doing absolutely terrible jobs. The American people have spent several hundreds of billions of dollars on our intelligence agencies over the last ten years, yet none of them ever hinted at, much less warned us, about the attacks of...
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Going to Belgrade
Belgrade, Yugoslavia, was my destination on April 12. I was accompanied by two other members of Congress—one Republican, one Democrat, both good friends. Both had voted for the 1999 bombing, although my Republican colleague had voted for it only because he felt he had to “support our troops.” I had not only voted against it,...