Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) has been a vigilant defender of the Constitution and liberty in Congress. With a new Congress and a new president taking office in 2017, this flashback speech from 2013 is relevant as Massie reminds each of those representatives, whether in the House, the Senate or the Oval Office of their duty to the American people who elected them to represent them.

Mr Speaker I rise today to implore my fellow congressmen to wake up. Can’t we see what’s happening? In just the past month, we discovered that the NSA snooping on millions of innocent Americans, using the Patriot Act, but Congress wrote the Patriot Act.

The IRS is targeting conservative organizations using the tax code. The Congress created the tax code.

The DHS is stockpiling 200 million hollow-point bullets. Congress just funded the DHS last week.

You want me to be surprised? I’m not surprised. I’m outraged!

But what’s happening here? In each case of executive overreach, Congress gave an inch and the executive branch took a mile. When our civil liberties are stolen, Congress investigates and expresses righteous indignation, but all too often Congress then turns around and funds and enables this unconstitutional behavior.

If we don’t reverse this trend, we can kiss our civil liberties goodbye.

The Constitution embodies American principles that men and women fought and died for to protect. We swore an oath to protect it.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to reflect on the damage that CISPA, the Patriot Act, and the NDAA have wrought on our civil liberties, and implore my fellow members to uphold the constitutional rights they swore to protect. Don’t yield one inch.

Massie has fought to secure the rights protected in the Second Amendment, called out corruption in DC, including lobbyists who tried to buy him off, advanced a foreign policy built on the wisdom of our founding fathers, sought to get the US out of the United Nations and has pushed for real transparency in government.