[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 3 (Friday, January 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S574]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           DWAYNE O. ANDREAS

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I picked up the fall 1994 issue of 
the publication, Constitution put out twice a year by the Foundation 
for the U.S. Constitution in New York City.
  The chairman of the foundation is Dwayne O. Andreas, the chief 
executive officer of Archer Daniels Midland [ADM] and a public-spirited 
citizen who has been willing to come to the fore on many key national 
concerns.
  I opened the magazine to read a preamble by Dwayne Andreas, and it is 
so loaded with common sense that I ask that it be inserted into the 
Congressional Record at the end of my remarks.
  Democracy can prevail only if citizens exercise self-restraint. We 
cannot see how close to the edge of the cliff we can come in exercising 
our freedoms.
  What Dwayne Andreas calls civic responsibility is the obligation of 
those of us in public office and of all American citizens.
  An item he refers to later in the publication is good but is, 
frankly, not as pointed as the Dwayne Andreas comment.
  I urge my colleagues and their staffs to read Dwayne Andreas's 
comments, which follows. At this point, I ask that Mr. Andreas's 
statement be printed in the Record.
  The statement follows:
       The rights we enjoy as American citizens have been a 
     central focus of Constitution since we began publishing the 
     magazine in 1988. In this issue we present a Special Report 
     in which we consider the other side of the contract: the 
     obligations of citizens to their society.
       These days, I sometimes wonder whether there is a 
     contract--whether we Americans recognize any limits on our 
     freedom to do as we please. We seem to have forgotten that 
     the Constitution guarantees our rights within society. 
     Increasingly, individuals and groups manifest a kind of ``in 
     your face'' contempt for the rights of their fellow citizens; 
     social obligations take a back seat to personal fulfillment 
     and economic gain.
       Nowhere is this lack of civility more evident than in the 
     area of social expression protected by the First Amendment to 
     the Constitution. Brutality, obscenity and raw sex have 
     become the common coin of television, film and popular music; 
     all who question the fitness of these materials for a 
     generally youthful audience are derided as prudes or thought 
     controllers. And the purveyors of this destructive effluvium 
     assert their right to sell it; few dare to speak of society's 
     right to resist the tide.
       But society does have that right, and I fear that those who 
     abuse the First Amendment in this way may be endangering the 
     splendid guarantee that has protected them for so long. Even 
     sober commentators like Irving Kristol worry about whether 
     the First Amendment can survive. Writing for the wall Street 
     Journal not long ago, Kristol labeled television violence a 
     form of child abuse and suggested that ``modest limits on 
     adult liberties ought to be perfectly acceptable if they 
     prevent tens of thousands of children from growing up into 
     criminal adults.''
       Are such legislated limits truly necessary? I don't think 
     so. Rather what's required is recalling that there is such a 
     thing as civic responsibility--that with the rights of 
     citizenship go some obligations. To remind readers of these 
     obligations, we have prepared the Special Report that begins 
     on page 50. These pages carry a timely reminder. Ignoring it 
     could menace the guarantees about which this magazine has 
     written so much since it was founded six years ago.
     

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