[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 26 (Monday, July 5, 1999)]
[Pages 1245-1247]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Charters of Freedom Project

July 1, 1999

    Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. As you might imagine, 
this is a very special day for Hillary and for me, in a signal honor for 
us to have the chance to serve at this moment. I want to thank John 
Carlin for his faithful stewardship of these great documents; thank my 
friend Mike Armstrong for his generosity and for calling on others in 
the business community to help in this endeavor; thank Secretary Riley 
and NASA and the Department of Commerce for working with the National 
Archives in designing and developing the new encasement that will house 
our charters. I thank the Center for Civic Education for their efforts 
to teach our children the importance of history.
    I'd like to thank these young people who are here who read--first 
they helped us recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and then they read from 
our founding documents. And I thought that young man did a remarkable 
job introducing Hillary. I thought they were all great. Let's give them 
a hand. [Applause]
    And I would like to say a special word of appreciation to 
Congressman Ralph Regula for his leadership and for proving that this is 
one issue which is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue. And 
I'm very grateful to him for his leadership in the United States 
Congress on this.
    On July 4, 1776, King George of England wrote in his diary, 
``Nothing of importance happened today.'' Now, even making allowances 
for the absence of world news and the Internet, His Majesty's diary 
entry stands as one of the more inaccurate statements ever written. 
[Laughter] We all know that those who put their names to the Declaration 
of Independence changed the world forever.
    Before then, liberty had been a rare and fleeting thing in the 
course of human history. Citizens of ancient democracies enjoyed it but 
let it slip from their grasp. So the Founders labored mightily to craft 
a Declaration of Independence, then a Constitution and a Bill of Rights 
that they hoped would help America to beat the odds and keep liberty 
alive.
    Two hundred and twenty-three years later we can safely say they 
succeeded not only in keeping the liberty they created, in fact, alive, 
but in moving ever closer, generation after generation, to the pure 
ideals embodied in the words they wrote.
    Today, our liberty extends not just to white men with property but 
to all Americans. Our concept of freedom no longer includes the so-
called freedom to keep slaves or extract profit from the labor of 
children. And our Constitution is the inspiration behind scores of 
democratic governments around the world, from Japan to Poland to 
Guatemala to South Africa.
    Each generation of Americans is called upon not only to preserve 
that liberty but to enhance it; not only to protect the institutions 
that secure our liberty but to renew and reform them to meet the 
challenges of the present with an eye for the future. The renewal of our 
generation--in our economy, our social fabric, our world leadership for 
peace and freedom--is well symbolized by the project we celebrate today, 
employing the finest minds and latest technologies to preserve these 
charters of freedom for generations yet unborn.
    When Hillary and I first realized that the turn of the millennium 
would occur while we were in the White House, we knew we had an 
obligation to mark it in ways that would be good for the country--in her 
words, ``by honoring the past and imagining the future.''
    What we do with these hallowed pieces of parchment, all Americans 
can do with the important historical treasures that exist all around 
them, in their attics, their parks, their townhalls. Saving America's 
treasures is not about living in the past. It is about conveying to 
future generations the American story in all its texture and richness 
and detail, about fulfilling our duty to be good ancestors, about 
catching the spirit Thomas Jefferson had in his later years, when he 
became devoted to preserving desks and chairs and other ordinary things 
from his extraordinary times. ``These small things,'' he wrote, ``may 
perhaps, like the relics of Saints, help to nourish our devotion to this 
holy bond of Union and keep it longer alive and warm in our 
affections.''

[[Page 1246]]

    I want to thank, first and foremost, Hillary for leading this 
effort, which has already accomplished so much, from restoring the Star-
Spangled Banner to honoring our great artists, thinkers, and scientists. 
I look forward to walking on some of those 2,000 Millennium Trails we'll 
build together, and to naming more and more Millennium Communities.
    We can all take pride in our efforts to renew our national 
treasures, for in a larger sense, the story of our Nation is the story 
of constant renewal, the realization that we preserve the ideals 
embodied in these documents not simply by revering them but by 
reaffirming our commitment to them. Each generation must widen the 
circle of opportunity, deepen the meaning of freedom, and strengthen the 
bonds of our community.
    ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal.'' We fought a war of revolution to make those words real in 1776. 
We rededicated ourselves to that proposition in 1863, recognizing that 
the bright words of the Declaration could not abide the stain of slavery 
or endure the breaking of our Union. We rededicated ourselves at the 
coming of the industrial age, when we recognized that new measures were 
required to protect and advance equal opportunity and freedom. We 
rededicated ourselves again in 1920, when we ratified the 19th 
amendment, granting women the right to vote. We saved those ideals in 
World

War II and for millions upon millions of people in the cold war. We 
rededicated ourselves again in 1963, hearing and heeding Dr. King's 
dream that one day, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former 
slaveowners would one day sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
    Today, at the coming of the information age, we rededicate ourselves 
yet again. Thank God our challenges are not those of depression or war, 
but those brought on by this hopeful and remarkable explosion in 
technology, by the globalization of our economy, by all the changes in 
the way we work and live and relate to each other and the rest of the 
world.
    To keep our ideals alive, we must embrace new ideas and follow a new 
course. Because we believe equal opportunity in 1999 is just as 
important as it was in 1776, we must rededicate ourselves to the truest 
guarantor of that opportunity, a world-class educational system that 
benefits every single child.
    Because we believe the Federal Government must promote the general 
welfare, as our Founders instructed, we are dedicated to using its 
resources to pay squarely our single, greatest challenge as a nation 
today, the aging of America, and to do so in a way that pays off our 
national debt for the first time since 1835.
    Because we believe every human being has the right to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness, and no one should be discriminated 
against, uprooted, abused, or killed because of his or her race or 
ethnic background or religion, we are proud to stand with our Allies in 
defense of these ideals in Kosovo.
    It is natural for any American contemplating the documents behind me 
to look upon those who crafted them as almost 
superhuman in their wisdom and the times that they lived as a golden 
age. But the more you read about them, the more you respect their 
achievement because the Founders were not gods on Earth; they were 
farmers and lawyers, printers and merchants, surveyors and soldiers, 
chosen by their constituents to hash out divergent interests and make 
difficult decisions about the future--to engage, in other words, in 
politics.
    I said at my alma mater, Georgetown, last week, that at its best, 
politics is about values, ideas, and action. That's what they were 
about. They turned politics into public service and made it a noble 
endeavor and left us a framework to keep it going. The Declaration and 
the Constitution emerged only after fierce debate and difficult 
compromise. Today, these documents enjoy universal acclaim. And at the 
time they were written, believe it or not, many Americans--though, thank 
goodness not a majority--actually did not agree with them.
    Yet, the Framers refused to let serious differences of opinion 
become excuses to put off action. They overcame their differences and 
completed their tasks and stayed true to an idea that Jefferson would 
later express in his first Inaugural, that every difference of opinion 
is not a difference of principle.

[[Page 1247]]

    We have to keep that idea in mind today. The greatest threat to our 
democracy today, and certainly to freedom and democracy around the 
world, is the poisonous idea that what divides us is far more important 
than what we have in common; that as long as we have differences of 
opinion, we must have personal animosities, and we cannot have positive 
action. This is a dubious political strategy, a dangerous governing 
strategy, wrong as a matter of historical fact, and an affront to the 
sacred documents we gather here to save.
    Despite their many differences, the Framers drafted, debated, and 
signed the Declaration of Independence in less than a month. They 
drafted, debated, and approved the Constitution in less than 5 months. 
If they could produce those enduring charters of freedom in a matter of 
months, surely there is no reason why we here in our time cannot make 
major progress in the remaining months of this millennium, to prepare 
our Nation for the new millennium and a 21st century which I am 
convinced will be America's best days.
    We owe it to these children to honor their past, to imagine their 
future, and to build a bridge to that future every single one of them 
can cross. So as we preserve the documents that launched this, the 
greatest journey in freedom and opportunity in all of history, let us 
resolve to do all we can to keep alive the spirit that got us to this 
point. These children will do the rest.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:55 p.m. in the Rotunda at the National 
Archives. In his remarks, he referred to C. Michael Armstrong, chairman 
and chief executive officer, AT&T and students Jasmine Smith, Kevin Su, 
and Nora Skelly, who read passages from the Declaration of Independence 
and the Constitution of the United States. The transcript made available 
by the Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks of the 
First Lady. A tape was not available for verification of the content of 
these remarks.