The photograph above was taken in the Spring, 1999, while inside under the dome debates were going on about America's involvement in Kosovo. Echoes of old debates could be detected, and reference after reference has been made to past conflicts: the Great War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. The capitol is a history museum that transforms itself daily, even as it preserves the legacy of what has gone before. Here one may visit the chamber where Senator Charles Sumner was beaten senseless over remarks made during a debate on slavery; here one can see where the great Chief Justice John Marshall held forth, before the Supreme Court had a home of its own; here one can look down on the spot where FDR delivered his "day of infamy" speech, where young Congressman Abe Lincoln offered his "spot resolutions," where the "Divine Daniel" Webster spoke of "liberty and union, now and forever!"; here one can go through statuary hall and see many of the great figures of history from each state--well known and less known. Here one can walk into the past.

But here as well one can see the impact of the modern world. Outside this magnificent building are concrete barricades, armed police officers, lines of people who now have to have tickets just to get in (as of March, 1999); here one must walk though metal detectors to enter, and one is struck by other constant reminders that the world is a dangerous place. These things tell us how fragile our lives are and how fragile our democratic government is, and how many people in the world there are who wish us ill. How different from the time when, as a teenager, in 1955 I first walked up those stairs and into the building with my father, with no sense that anything was amiss. Those were different days.

Still, on a spring day in the warm April sunshine one can hope to forget those unpleasant reminders of what this century has brought; here, in the quiet, one can try to block out the sirens, and the images of bodies being torn apart and of people suffering and dying. Here the debate goes on, even as the world seems not to notice, nor to care, that there can indeed be peaceful ways of resolving our differences. Here hope is still alive, even as we face a millennium that may well bring horrors we have not yet contemplated, or joys we have not yet experienced. It is up to us, the human race, to decide what we will become, to choose the paths that will take us into the future.