[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 200 (Wednesday, December 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7855-S7857]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CONSTITUTION DAY ESSAYS

  Mr. SASSE. I thank the Senator from Mississippi for yielding to me.
  Mr. President, I rise to highlight the work of some truly impressive 
Nebraska high school students. In September, to celebrate Constitution 
Day, my office offered a challenge to high schoolers in my State to 
submit essays describing ``The Relationship Between the Declaration of 
Independence and the U.S. Constitution.'' We received contributions 
from across Nebraska from students in public, private, and home 
schools.
  Today, I am pleased to announce the three winners: Ingrid Williamsen 
from Logan View Senior High School in the

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First Congressional District; Patrick Collins from the AP U.S. History 
Class at Mount Michael Benedictine in Elkhorn in the Second 
Congressional District; and Kate Pipher from Nebraska Christian School 
in Central City in the Third Congressional District.
  The lessons these three Nebraska students can teach us are enduringly 
relevant not only for other high schoolers but in this body today. I 
would like to read briefly from each of their essays.
  Ingrid Williamsen wrote:

       The Constitution was put in place so that the rights and 
     liberties laid out in the Declaration of Independence could 
     be enforced. It puts limits on the government so that the 
     government cannot infringe on the rights of the people. It 
     gives the new government the power to guarantee the liberty 
     of all the people. Both functions are directly tied to the 
     Declaration.

  In her essay, Kate Pipher wrote:

       The Founding Fathers adopted a humble posture to both their 
     Creator and a great humanity. They understood they did not 
     possess the power to redefine the rights of man. Their role 
     was to defend, discover, and reveal those rights for the 
     citizens. The Constitution's goal is to protect the 
     inalienable rights of every individual Image-Bearer that the 
     Declaration of Independence lays out.

  Finally, in his essay, Patrick Collins referenced Abraham Lincoln's 
``Fragment on the Constitution'' and declared that the Constitution is 
``the silver frame that protects the golden apple of the Declaration of 
Independence. . . . Thus, the Constitution is indeed a structural 
embodiment of those famous Truths which we held then and hold now to be 
self-evident.''
  I am grateful to have received so many great essays from students 
across Nebraska. I thank all of them for their work. It is clear to me 
that not only their classmates but Washington and this body can learn 
some Schoolhouse Rock Civics from Nebraska high school kids.
  I would like to congratulate Ingrid, Kate, and Patrick.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
their full essays.
   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

    The Relationship Between the Declaration of Independence and the 
                              Constitution


                INGRID WILLIAMSON--LOGAN VIEW SENIOR HIGH

       The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution are 
     very separate but closely related documents. They are quite 
     similar in many ways and work together to form the backbone 
     of the United States.
       The Declaration of Independence was written to justify the 
     Colonies independence from Great Britain. It goes further and 
     sets forth the principals and ideas for a fair new 
     government. The Constitution outlines how the new government 
     would function and enforce the rights in the Declaration.
       The Declaration of Independence was designed and drafted to 
     justify the Colonies breaking away from Great Brittan. The 
     Declaration made clear promises as to the liberties that 
     should be given to all men, that all men are created equal, 
     and that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the 
     pursuit of happiness. The Declaration set limits on the 
     government to ensure these rights are inevitable and never 
     taken away by the government.
       The Constitution was put in place so that the rights and 
     liberties laid out in the Declaration of Independence could 
     be enforced. It is the document that sets forth how the new 
     government will function. It puts limits on the government so 
     that it cannot infringe upon the rights of the people. It 
     gives the new government the power to guarantee the liberty 
     of all the people. Both functions are directly tied to the 
     Declaration.
       The Declaration of Independence will remain the same as it 
     is now, it cannot be changed. This makes it a purely 
     historical document. The Constitution is a living document 
     and has been and can be amended. This was by design and 
     allows both documents to better protect the natural rights of 
     all.
       The relationship between the two documents, the Declaration 
     of Independence and the Constitution, is one that cannot be 
     broken. Without either of them, the history and future of the 
     United States would have a much different blueprint. They are 
     two of the most important and endearing documents in the 
     history of the United States. Chief Justice Warren Burger 
     once said, ``The Declaration of Independence was the promise, 
     The Constitution was the fulfillment''. The Declaration of 
     Independence would be an unfulfilled promise had the 
     Constitution not been put in place.
                                  ____



                     KATE PIPHER--NEBRASKA CHRISTIAN

       The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the 
     United States of America share a substantial relationship 
     because they both outline basic truths for The American 
     People that have caused our country to thrive. To begin, the 
     Founding Fathers argue that all rights come from a Creator, 
     not a fallible government. Then they conclude that the 
     purpose of the American government is to secure these God-
     given rights.
       The Declaration of Independence recognizes there are Laws 
     of Nature that God established. These laws are principles for 
     what is just, right, and true. They state that all people 
     have equal standing and dignity before God. Because certain 
     truths are self-evident, citizens carry responsibility to 
     self-govern. They are accountable to more than a man-made 
     government, they are accountable to a Sovereign God.
       The authors of both documents recognized they were 
     discovering, not defining the inalienable rights of humanity. 
     The right to Life, Liberty, and Happiness outlined first in 
     the Declaration of Independence and then again in the 5th 
     amendment to the Constitution are God-given. The Founding 
     Fathers adopted a humble posture to both their Creator and a 
     greater humanity. They understood they did not possess the 
     power to redefine the rights of man. Their role was to 
     defend, discover, and reveal those rights for the citizens. 
     The Constitution's goal is to protect the inalienable rights 
     of every individual Image-Bearer that the Declaration of 
     Independence lays out. This is the unique, profound outlook 
     that both documents portray.
       It was no accident that the men who penned the Constitution 
     utilized many of the terms from the Declaration of 
     Independence. The Constitution is an attempt to mirror 
     natural law with a civil, written law. In an ideal world, the 
     natural law of God and the law of man would align exactly. 
     The Founding Fathers stressed that the bent of the human 
     heart is towards tyranny. The Declaration of Independence was 
     an announcement that the citizens of America would not live 
     under tyranny any longer and desired an alternative form of 
     government. The Constitution resulted as a document that 
     protected the young country from inevitable tyranny.
       The authors of the Constitution perceived that in order to 
     preserve the truths laid out in the Declaration and to secure 
     the blessings of liberty for their children and following 
     generations, a written law was necessary. The Declaration of 
     Independence provided a mandate for government to preserve, 
     secure, and provide the rights our generous God bestowed upon 
     us. The Constitution fulfilled that mandate. The ``We the 
     People'' from the preamble are, in essence, the same citizens 
     who recognized their rights from their Creator in the 
     Declaration of Independence. Acting upon the desire to 
     preserve these rights, they crafted two humble documents that 
     cataclysmicly shaped the course of America's history.
                                  ____



  PATRICK COLLINS FROM MR. JOHN ROSHONE'S APUSH CLASS AT MOUNT MICHAEL 
                    BENEDICTINE IN ELKHORN, NEBRASKA

       One of the most fitting metaphors attributed to Abraham 
     Lincoln is that of the Constitution as the silver frame that 
     protects the golden apple of the Declaration of Independence. 
     While it certainly is apt to say that the Constitution's 
     framework is meant to embody the political philosophy 
     presented in the Declaration of Independence, even more 
     important than this overarching idea is a more specific one. 
     Most Americans are familiar with the words ``we hold these 
     truths to be self-evident,'' but arguably more pertinent to 
     the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration 
     is an idea only discovered through a more than cursory 
     examination of the Declaration's less celebrated portion: the 
     27 grievances listed against the king of England. These 
     grievances illustrate the ease with which the British 
     government simply disregarded the English ``constitution,'' 
     wherein the rights of the people and powers of the government 
     were often vague, unwritten traditional understandings 
     subject to individual interpretation. The first Americans 
     knew from experience that any document or governmental 
     structure attempting to restrict the government and preserve 
     the people's rights would be woefully inadequate if not 
     written frankly and followed strictly. In that sense, the 
     Declaration is not simply about the need for independence but 
     even more about the ancillarity of a written Constitution in 
     preserving the desired freedom.
       Understanding the importance of adhering to a strict 
     structure, it is eminently clear that any interpretation or 
     judicial decision that seeks to change the original meaning 
     of this structure is misguided. Attempting to push the 
     Constitution in a desired direction without actually changing 
     its words, while typically well-intentioned, betrays the 
     ideals expressed in the Declaration and fought for in the 
     Revolution and undermines the purpose of creating a written 
     Constitution in the first place, and yet so many still seek 
     to do so. Our cultural misunderstanding of this portion of 
     the reasoning behind American independence is so pervasive 
     that a large portion of American society truly believes that 
     the Supreme Court has the authority to create new laws and 
     amendments from the bench. If so many Americans continue to 
     treat our founding documents with such flippancy, we will not 
     even realize as our leaders begin to do the same and our 
     Constitution effectively morphs into the vaguely understood 
     one that the British had so long ago. We have forgotten so 
     thoroughly the grievances that necessitated independence that 
     we would not bat an eye if our own government were to violate 
     the same principles

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     of freedom today. Our Founding Fathers would cringe to see 
     our Constitution treated more and more like the one from 
     which they sought so furiously to gain independence at the 
     genesis of our nation. Thus, the Constitution is indeed a 
     structural embodiment of those famous truths which we held 
     then and hold now to be self-evident. However, the oft-
     forgotten grievances in the Declaration render the need for a 
     government and a people that hold to the original meaning of 
     that Constitution equally self-evident to any who dare to dig 
     deeper.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Mississippi.

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