Just in time for Independence Day, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Port Barre, has a video message for America. But instead of visiting constituent cookouts, shooting off fireworks and waving the United States flag, Higgins delivers a stark dispatch from the Nazis' Auschwitz concentration camp at Oswiecim, Poland.
"A great sense of dread comes over you in this place," Higgins says, leading the viewer on a five-minute, nine-second tour of the site, with a dirge-like solo violin playing in the background. "Man's inhumanity to man can be quite shocking."
The Auschwitz Memorial's official Twitter account said there should be "mournful silence" inside the gas chamber, where Higgins recorded part of his five-minute video.
"This is why homeland security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible," says Higgins, a former law enforcement officer#who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. "The world's a smaller place now than it was in World War II. The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this.
"It's hard to walk away from the gas chambers and ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment -- unwavering commitment -- to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world."
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