[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 86 (Thursday, June 30, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  JULY 4--OUR SACRED NATIONAL BIRTHDAY

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, ironically, King George III of England wrote 
in his journal on July 4, 1776, ``Nothing of importance happened 
today.''
  The limitations of communication in 1776 notwithstanding, could the 
assessment of the events of any day in recorded history have missed the 
mark so radically as did His Britannic Majesty's commentary on that 
July 4?
  The annual calendar is crowded with days of note: January 1, New 
Year's Day; March 15, the Ides of March; March 17, St. Patrick's Day; 
Passover; Palm Sunday; Easter; Mother's Day; Labor Day; and December 
25, Christmas Day.
  But, increasingly, July 4--American Independence Day--is taking on a 
universal significance for people everywhere. The founders of the new 
nation considered Independence Day an important occasion for rejoicing. 
John Adams said,

       I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by 
     succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It 
     ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn 
     acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized 
     with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, 
     bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent 
     to the other, from this time forward for evermore.

  Independence Day was first observed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1777. 
Bands played, colorful bunting was displayed, and the people rejoiced. 
Independence Day has been celebrated all over the country from that day 
to the present day.
  In 1776, Europe was dominated by kings and other feudal personages, 
most of whom claimed their power through ``Divine Right''--that is, 
that their power and authority had been dispensed to them as an Act of 
Will by God Almighty and, hence, they were at liberty to rule as they 
saw fit, justly or unjustly, assured in their consciences that their 
decisions and their deeds were all equally expressions of the Divine 
Will.
  The American Declaration of Independence, drawn up by some of the 
most select minds ever designated to launch any ship of state on its 
maiden voyage, flew directly in the face of Divine Right theory. The 
Founding Fathers, taking their own destinies and that of the Colonies 
that they represented in Philadelphia into their own hands, asserted 
for the first time in a great founding document that the aborning 
American nation and its populace had a God-given right to liberty and 
self-governance, especially in the face of tyranny, and that they were 
breaking the historic ties that linked the new nation to the British 
throne.
  To assert a claim to popular sovereignty was one thing; to make that 
sovereignty a reality was something else. Thus, before the claims of 
the Declaration of Independence could have any practical effect, the 
American people, in their righteous conviction, were compelled to make 
their claims to liberty and self-government stick on the battlefield. 
They rose to the occasion. At Lexington their blood was shed. At 
Concord--

     By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
     Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
     Here once the embattled farmers stood,
     And fired the shot heard round the world.

Trenton, Princeton, and Saratoga were the successive theatres of their 
victories in a war that finally terminated in the happy scene at 
Yorktown.
  Our Founding Fathers did, by their sacrifices and with their blood, 
validate their claims to liberty and self-government, thus eventually 
forcing on the greatest military and naval power of the late 18th 
century a peace that officially recognized the independence of the 
United States of America.
  Striking that blow for liberty meant that Americans were no longer 
``subjects,'' but were ever after free people with personal freedoms, 
but also with personal responsibilities for the governance and the 
preservation of the new nation--a nation established not on the basis 
of some mystic mythology as had been Ancient Rome or Imperial Japan, 
but a nation formed and established by the will and the acts of 
sovereign men and women in behalf of their posterity and the future.
  Thenceforth, the United States of America became a living 
contradiction to every claim of absolutism and despotism issued from 
the vain imaginings of any tyrant and uttered from the throat of every 
dictator.
  Certainly, as 20th-century Americans, we are indebted to the 
generation of 1776, to those Americans who broke with the British Crown 
and created this nation--a nation that did not rise, vaporous and 
evanescent, from the brains of Rousseau or Hobbs or Thomas More, or 
spring like Aphrodite from the foam of the ocean waves. It was the 
production of hardy farmers, small-towns people, sturdy mountaineers, 
and other common folk who built upon the solid foundations of 
experience gained through centuries of struggle with hereditary and 
haughty monarchs in the mother country of England, and the experiences 
of the infant colonies.
  Mr. President, that which was at first only a small remote star, 
glimmering on the political concerns of Europe with a faint, cold beam, 
has now become a new firmament in the heaven of nations, shining with 
the brilliance of a sun that cannot be hidden. Like the immutable laws 
of motion and of order, which pervade the orbs of the universe and fix 
the planets in their unerring courses, our commerce has spread over all 
the seas of the globe; and the increase of our fields and factories, 
forests and mines outruns calculation and almost mocks human 
imagination.

  The Republican system of government which was created by the blood 
and brawn and brains of our fathers was the nearest approach to human 
perfection that the political world has yet seen, and it will stand in 
history without a parallel until the trumpet of the angel shall sound 
and time shall be no more.
  But, just as winning liberty was no small feat by our fathers, even 
so has preserving that liberty been a never ending responsibility 
shared by all Americans today and in all the years to come--both in 
time of peace as well as in war.

     For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,
     Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
     But that defences, musters, preparations,
     Should be maintain'd, assembled and collected,
     As were a war in expectation.

  Thus, here today and across America, every American owes a debt of 
gratitude to those virtually millions of men and women who have guarded 
our precious liberties in the generations since July 4, 1776.
  Indeed, the claims asserted in the Declaration of Independence would 
have been hollow had not in subsequent American history ordinary 
American citizens risen to extraordinary heights of personal valor and 
sacrifice in service to preserving our liberties and keeping America 
free and independent.
  Quite recently, I received a sincerely reflective letter from a West 
Virginia veteran of World War II, Mr. George H. Ayres of Chapmanville, 
West Virginia. Mr. Ayres is 83 years old, and had followed the 
television coverage of the early June commemorations in Europe of the 
Fiftieth Anniversary of D-Day and the Normandy campaign.
  Those telecasts evidently set Mr. Ayres to contemplating his own 
experiences. Mr. Ayres wrote to me, saying, in part:

       I was in Naples--Foggia, Rome, Anzio--in Italy. Also, in . 
     . . the Tunisia campaign in Africa. Finally, in the German 
     campaign in France. . . . I went over on the Queen Mary and 
     returned on the Queen Elizabeth. . . . I was discharged May 
     24, 1945. . . . The worst was Anzio. I don't know how I lived 
     there. I still remember broad daylight created there at 
     night. It was not like a [lighted] football field, but [like] 
     natural daylight. . . . Civilization almost vanished. . . . I 
     don't want to discuss much of the stuff that went on then. . 
     . . I am 83 now, but I still think about it. Excuse my 
     scribbling.

  Mr. President, George Ayres is a confirmation of the faith that 
guided the Founding Fathers in the gamble that they launched on July 4, 
1776, in the Declaration of Independence. On that first Fourth of July, 
the men who affixed their signatures on a document that was meant to 
sever the Colonies' ties with the British Crown, gambled their lives, 
their fortunes, and their ``sacred honor'' on the patriotism and 
integrity of men like George Ayres of Chapmanville, West Virginia, and 
on men in Dayton, Ohio, and Denver, Colorado, and in Lowell, 
Massachusetts, and in cities and towns and villages throughout 
America--indeed, the Founding Fathers gambled all that they possessed 
on a faith that men and women who enjoyed the fruits and the blessings 
of American citizenship would live up to the demands of that 
citizenship when conditions demanded.
  In this year of 1994, as we look towards the joyous Fourth on Monday, 
I pay particular tribute to those veterans of World War II who, 50 
years ago, guaranteed our freedoms against the onslaughts of one of the 
most diabolic affronts to human decency in history--led by Adolph 
Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito. Most of the remaining 
veterans of World War II are long into their earthly pilgrimages, and 
their numbers shrink more with each passing year.
  But like those World War II veterans, the veterans of Korea and 
Vietnam and other American wars, as well as those who stood guard on 
Freedom's Frontiers throughout the Cold War, also have a claim on the 
Nation's gratitude.
  To all those men and women of honor, America offers its thankfulness 
and respect.
  On this coming July 4, I hope that all Americans will bow their heads 
in a moment of prayerful thanksgiving to the Ultimate Author of all of 
our liberties, even the Heavenly Father Himself, from Whose Providence 
all of our blessings and privileges flow, and unto Whom we will finally 
answer for our stewardship over this Divinely Ordained, Divinely 
Conceived United States of America.

     Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
     Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
     And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
     When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
     The endeavour of this present breath may buy
     That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge
     And make us heirs of all eternity.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The absence of a quorum has been suggested. 
The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. I ask unanimous consent if I may proceed as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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