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Bill of Rights Bicentennial 12/16/91 [OA 6040] [2]
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Bill of Rights Bicentennial 12/16/91 [OA 6040] [2]
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Bill of Rights Bicentennial 12/16/91 [OA 6040] [2]
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26
17
5
3
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson P1.
12-12-91 ; 3:05PM ;
2023953744-
6218:# 1
CHECK KEY THE
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
WASHINGTON. D.C. 20503
December 12, 1991
MEMORANDUM P3:36 TO TONY SNOW
FROM
MICHAEL R. DELAND
gl DEC I RE:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL SPEECH
am concerned that two passages in the draft speech, while
technically accurate, create an opportunity for intense criticism
of the President's Domestic Agenda in a setting that should be
devoted to an uplifting, statesman-like presentation.
#1
[On the bottom of page 4]: The President has offered ground
breaking proposals in the areas of education and the
environment, and it is quite possible he will do so on
health care in the coming months. We are all involved in
trying to promote the President's Domestic Agenda. To
assert that education, environmental protection, and health
care are "not a subject of fundamental human rights" will be
the subject of gross political distortion.
#2
[On the bottom of page 6]: While the passage on property
rights is conceptually sound, the relationship between
government activities and private property rights is far too
complex to address in a paragraph and again will set up the
President's remarks for gross political distortion (from
all sides).
I strongly recommend that these two passages be substantially
revised or dropped altogether.
CC: Phil Brady
Recycled Paper
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
:12-12-91 ; 12:51 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 2
Document No. 292661
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY
12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER - MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
BOSKIN
CARD
DEMAREST
DELAND
KAUFMAN
FITZWATER
MCBRIDE
GRAY
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
COULD
RESPONSE: PROVACATIVE: 1.) Pg.4 - Section ON Rights /LEAVED impression
Potus is Against the Causes of Education, ENVIRON
AND Health CARE -(As written)
2.) pg6 - "Corrcive LAWMAKERS + bureaucants"- -
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Members of congress will he in the Audience,
Assistant to the President
Do we Nero to be s provecutive 2
and Staff Secretary
=) AMD $6.11 but Right Saerob Facit?
Ext. 2702
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:51 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218:# 3
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
31 DEC P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
*SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:52 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 4
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the
1 European
constitution writers face today.
[rapple with
ethnic and religious differences,
:
issues of
where power lies and of how to com
son saw
such problems of "faction" as the 1
t to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write
Chriseve
?
re
businessmen, farmers, planters and
their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for le
P with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:52 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 5
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part.' 11
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to -
solv
ms. They believed law and government,
like
uld seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Tax
ks, civil litigation and law enforcement
act
copaluties
the social organism when provided in
sma
:essary doses. But when taken needlessly
or
Icine could sicken or kill a society.
therefore became primarily a plan for
pr
on of power. The federalist system seeks
to
se to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:53 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 6
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
compations
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights - not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
sushis lerges
to education, 10 a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
Aricmures, equerquist w impression
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:53 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 7
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:54 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 8
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom?
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government.
I
simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
,ny
spent a quarter of the gross national product.
It's hard to
trovadas,
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn.
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
:12-12-91 ; 12:54 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;# 9
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
right
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
for
liberty."
This
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\ And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. 111
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
SENT BY:The TICKET CENTER
12-12-91 ; 12:55 ; LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS-
6218;#10
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to head Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
Document No. 292661
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY 12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER - MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
CARD
BOSKIN
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
KAUFMAN
GRAY
MCBRIDE
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony Snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
31 DEC II P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part."
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom? 11
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn.
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\ And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. III
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
Document No. 29/2661
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
91 DEC
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY 12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
BOSKIN
CARD
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
KAUFMAN
MCBRIDE
GRAY
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony Snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
See comments. Thanks.
Elizabeth Lutti&L
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
31 DEC 11 P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
also ( Juance )
living center for constitutional studies. NI am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part."
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
(Julshu)
Taxation and public works, civil litigation D and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
Canesal Note:
This makes
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
taxes light
to education, " a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
of tress
Not issues? a good idea althongh
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights
who buth an
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
politically
and
it
is
legally
education In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist But he made no attempt to
Correa.
(Jumice)
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
unreasonable searches
(Juate)
protects suspects from (arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
alongwin (Jusme)
personal rights the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private (Jusiee) property 6 and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom? 11
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn. 11
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
in connection winne Civil Rights ace OF 1991, I called
importance of ons laws
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress applying equally to
and to private Citizens and agencis of government, and, although Congress did apply that law to itself, it did NOC
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes do so
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights and fully
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay completely.
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. It is plainly unjust.
\ And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
(damine)
for redressing this injustice. III
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long (oam years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
(Duggan/Simon)
Simon
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
written
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
NY
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
Judeo
ethic.
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part.'
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom?
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn.
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\
And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice.
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. It's up to us to choose: Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
Document No. 292661
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY 12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER - MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
BOSKIN
CARD
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
KAUFMAN
MCBRIDE
GRAY
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony Snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
See comments
15:50 2103016
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
31 DECII P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. Theykept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part. "
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
1
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom? 11
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
Al-Sormarris
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
X5873
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn. 11
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\ And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. 111
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty.
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against factions, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
--- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
\
To
Date
Time
WHILE YOU WERE OUT
M
of
Phone
Area Code
Number
Extension
TELEPHONED
PLEASE CALL
CALLED TO SEE YOU
WILL CALL AGAIN
WANTS TO SEE YOU
URGENT
RETURNED YOUR CALL
Message
4/15/62
Operator
AMPAD
EFFICIENCY®
23-021 CARBONLESS
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
Date: 12/21/2099
91
TO:
Tay /doe
FROM:
JOHN S. GARDNER
Special Assistant to the President
and Assistant Staff Secretary
This is one of the finest speeches
& have read in three years has. my
comments & think are consistent with the
thrust of your argument.
Thanks
Jos.
Wen't to the they states sent in 1789?
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
91 DECII P7:06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role he spent months of
1789?
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
are part of the framework of a just and and society. that They
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part."
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for uniting while the nation
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to
any our country's
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
actually, amendments Iand II (I was on Congessional
can lead to
pay ) were defeated by the states.
5
How
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
If
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
No
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no appropriate surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom?
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn. 11
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
disagreeing, but we have to be careful it we'regoring to use banguage of original intent d thought the
& there actual legislative history for this, or is it only implied? I'm not
nigiral point was purely regative; i.e. to enoure property is not taken unjustly.
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society.' He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. It is plainly unjust.
And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice.
not the states on
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
regions, but
destructive forces of what Madison called factions
what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
--- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
December 12, 1991
MEMORANDUM FOR TONY SNOW
FROM:
GENE SCHAERR
thy
ASSOCIATE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
SUBJECT:
Presidential Remarks: Bill of Rights Bicentennial
Montpelier - Monday, December 16, 1991
The attached comments are in addition to those we provided
yesterday, and which have not yet been implemented.
Attachment
CC: Phillip D. Brady
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
91 DEC 12 P5: 49
Document No.
2926.6
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY
12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER - MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
CARD
BOSKIN
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
KAUFMAN
GRAY
MCBRIDE
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony Snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
31 DEC P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part. "
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4 It thereby
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress Phy ensumng that citiums enjoy the their funts of
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme some ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
enforceable legislation constraints on government
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but am at set of legally
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
projected our perper from varous
governmental almoses that mere in the 18th
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
century and are still in Survice nations
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before prior to indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's sespect for our
the
sus:
law enforcement and military authorities
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
the
that the central government should have no powers other than
american
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom? 11
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn.
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
I ti say also t
reducing the anything burder of
federal stran in the days to am
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\
And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. III
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
Document No. 29266
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY 12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER - MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
BOSKIN
CARD
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
KAUFMAN
MCBRIDE
GRAY
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony Snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
31 DEC P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part."
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom? 11
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn. 11
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\ And I have only just bequn to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. 111
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
FAX TO DALE
Document No. 29266
DEC 1 2 1991
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
12/12/91
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: TODAY 12/12/91 2:00 pm
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER - MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SUNUNU
MCCLURE
SCOWCROFT
PETERSMEYER
DARMAN
PORTER
BRADY
ROGICH
BROMLEY
SMITH
BOSKIN
CARD
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
KAUFMAN
MCBRIDE
GRAY
HOLIDAY
SNOW
REMARKS:
Please forward your comments directly to Tony Snow, Rm. 122, x2930,
no later than 2:00 p.m., TODAY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, with a copy
to this office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
91 DEC 11 P7: 06
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part."
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights.
Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care, " a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom? 11
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn. 11
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outwéight outwight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation.
If
our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\ And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. 111
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: \ Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
(Duggan/Simon)
December 11, 1991
Draft Two
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
Here at Montpelier in 1787, just prior to the Constitutional
Convention where he would play a leading role, he spent months of
intense study of world governments. Here in 1791 he drafted the
Bill of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with
a scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
2
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. They had a passion for learning. The kept up with the
state of the art in engineering and agricultural sciences. They
steeped themselves in the wisdom of the Greek and Roman classics,
in the faith and philosophy of the Christian era. Neither cynics
nor idealists, they held a hopeful but pragmatic vision. Having
seen human nature in the public square, they experienced both its
frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
3
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part."
The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practical in the
states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
4
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
5
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill respects the human
dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous offenses
by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These protections of
personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary actions of the
military against private property, and the guarantee of the right
to keep and bear arms have enhanced the public's respect for our
law enforcement and military authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
6
have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom?
As we begin our third century under the protections of the
Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow Americans to focus on four
Madisonian legacies in need of renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. I simply cannot believe the Framers intended their
heirs to live under a regime whose central government taxed and
spent a quarter of the gross national product. It's hard to
square the philosophy of Madison and Jefferson with a culture of
coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats intent upon regulating
everything from child care facilities to the price of corn.
Second is protection of property rights. The Takings Clause
in the Fifth Amendment is based on a liberating political insight
that our acquisitive government largely has lost sight of. The
Framers intended that by making government pay a fair price
whenever it takes property for public use, it would have a strong
incentive to ensure that the benefits of its action outweight the
costs.
Today, however, government largely disregards the burdensome
costs of regulation. If our government authorities today were to
compensate property owners whenever regulation impinged on
property rights, we would have a lot less regulation. Government
7
would be smaller and less expensive. Most important, our entire
economy would be more productive and competitive.
Third is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I called attention to the fact that our Congress
today exempts itself from a number of important laws it imposes
on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act, the Equal Pay
Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This state of
affairs mocks the memory of our founders. \ It is plainly unjust.
\
And I have only just begun to make my voice heard on the need
for redressing this injustice. III
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
8
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty.
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good? 11
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. Their greatness
is that they harmonize our national law with American civic
virtues -- hard work, commitment to family and community,
postponement of gratification for the sake of larger and longer
term good. They are not simply dry ink markings on old brittle
parchment -- they are the spirit that animates the American
nation. This spirit will keep America alive for new generations
only if each one of us renews the habits of liberty and justice.
The Republic that Madison gave us will live for long years to
come only if we keep our culture committed to the civic virtues
he so cherished.
#
#
#
(Duggan/Simon)
December 9, 1991
Draft One
Rights
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS:
BILL OF RIGHTS BICENTENNIAL
MONTPELIER
ORANGE, VIRGINIA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1991
[time]
Governor Wilder, Senator Warner, Senator Robb, Congressman
Allen, [other acknowledgments]:
We gather in the pastoral beauty of Virginia's Piedmont to
celebrate two hundred years since the Virginia General Assembly
ratified the first ten amendments to the United States
Constitution. This action brought into force our Bill of Rights.
It is fitting that we meet at the home of James Madison.
His study and experience shaped both the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights. Here at Montpelier, just prior to the
Constitutional Convention, he spent months of intense study of
world governments; and in 1791, here is where he drafted the Bill
of Rights. In Madison we honor not only a learned man with a
scholar's appreciation for political philosophy. We remember
also a practical politician whose skill and leadership helped
persuade the free people of America to embrace the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights as our basis for government.
I want to thank the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Sabre Foundation,
and others who have worked to organize this commemoration. The
National Trust, which administers this beautiful estate, deserves
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the highest praise for its innovative plan to make Montpelier a
living center for constitutional studies. I am deeply honored to
welcome some very special guests -- legal scholars and statesmen
from European nations recently liberated from Soviet
totalitarianism.
Two centuries ago, our new republic was free, dynamic,
hopeful, open and growing. Our political founders were
determined to preserve those qualities. But as Madison observed,
men are not angels. The Framers of our Constitution confronted
problems not unlike those that the central and eastern European
constitution writers face today. The Framers had to grapple with
ethnic and religious differences, regional interests, issues of
where power lies and of how to contain conflict. Madison saw
such problems of "faction" as the most dangerous threat to our
national survival.
The men who gathered to write the Constitution were
businessmen, farmers, planters and lawyers, mostly in their 30s
and 40s. Neither cynics nor idealists, they held a hopeful but
pragmatic vision. Having seen human nature in the public square,
they experienced both its frailty and its aspirations.
The Framers sought to strengthen civil society by
encouraging public habits of freedom, justice, and cooperation.
They worked to give us a charter that would serve, as Madison put
it, "not only to guard the society against the oppression of its
rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the
injustice of the other part.' "
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The Framers had the humble genius to recognize that man-
made laws and government cannot -- and should not attempt to --
solve most human problems. They believed law and government,
like good medicine, should seek first and foremost to do no harm.
Taxation and public works, civil litigation and law enforcement
activity give health to the social organism when provided in
small, measured and necessary doses. But when taken needlessly
or to excess, this medicine could sicken or kill a society.
The Constitution therefore became primarily a plan for
preventing concentration of power. The federalist system seeks
to keep government close to the people, whenever practicable in
the states and not in the nation's capital. Within the national
government we have our celebrated system of checks and balances,
with powers scattered among the executive, legislative and
judicial branches. The judiciary's independence is vital to our
governance by the rule of law.
The founders believed freedom was the key to economic as
well as social well-being. They made the Constitution a powerful
legal instrument for economic opportunity and growth. I do not
believe our republic could have survived -- much less could it
have prospered -- without the Commerce Clause preventing the
states from setting up trade barriers against one another.
Through the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause, the Bill
of Rights protects private property and further promotes economic
progress.
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The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its
attention to truly important things -- and to things over which a
just and limited government can exercise some actual control.
Two centuries ago, just as now, extreme ideologues failed to
appreciate the moderate realism of our Constitution and Bill of
Rights. Edmund Burke said: "This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man that they have
totally forgotten his nature." The Framers, however, were
practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a
bill of rights -- not a piece of propaganda but an act of
enforceable legislation.
There's a lesson in this for today's writers of national
constitutions and of international treaties. In the discourse of
our times, one often hears "rights" invoked in rhetoric that
debases the authentic concept of rights. Politicians make
impassioned pronouncements on a "right to health care," a "right
to education," a "right to a clean environment," and so forth.
The American Bill of Rights of course enumerates no such rights.
Madison himself was an early architect of American higher
education. In the context of his times he was an ardent and
quite sophisticated environmentalist. But he made no attempt to
legislate a "right to education" or a "right to a clean
environment." He and his fellow Framers recognized that a
shopping list of goods and services available in the market -- no
matter how valuable or how vital -- was not a subject of
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fundamental human rights. The Framers knew government
paternalism is sugar-coated tyranny.
Madison was his era's greatest champion of freedom of
conscience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the very first
article of the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans' freedom to
worship, to assemble, to speak and to publish.
The Bill of Rights offers a highly developed system of
protections for persons facing criminal charges. The Bill
protects suspects from arbitrary investigation. It guarantees
hearings before grand juries before indictment and trials before
petit juries in felony cases. The Bill shows regard for the
human dignity of criminals convicted of even the most heinous
offenses by banning cruel and inhuman punishment. These
protections of personal rights, the safeguards against arbitrary
actions of the military against private property, and the
guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms have enhanced the
public's respect for our law enforcement and military
authorities.
The final articles of the Bill of Rights emphatically assert
that the central government should have no powers other than
those explicitly given it by the Constitution. All other powers
belong to the people -- or where government is necessary, to
state governments.
For all the pride we should take in our Constitution and
Bill of Rights, this must not be an occasion simply for self-
congratulation. Indeed, if Madison could speak to us today, I
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have a good idea what he would say. He would ask: Are we better
off than we were two hundred years ago? 11 Are American citizens
and their leaders still living true to the Framers' legacy of
limited government and ordered freedom?
As we begin our third century of living under the well-
crafted protections of the Bill of Rights, I urge my fellow
Americans to focus on three Madisonian legacies in need of
renewal.
First is limited government. In many ways, I believe our
founders' vision has given way to a new reality of pervasive
government. It's hard to square the philosophy of Madison and
Jefferson with a culture of coercive lawmakers and bureaucrats
intent upon regulating everything from child care facilities to
the price of corn in Iowa. I simply cannot believe the Framers
intended their heirs to live under a regime whose central
government taxed and spent a quarter of the gross national
product. 11
Second is equal application of the laws. It was alien to
Madison's ideals that our legislators would exempt themselves
from laws they impose on everyone else. In Federalist Paper
number 57, Madison asserted that elected officials "can make no
law which will not have in full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of society." He added
ominously, "If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to
tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature as well as on
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the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but
liberty."
Recently I have called public attention to the fact that our
Congress today exempts itself from a number of important laws it
imposes on everyone else. These include Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilites Act of 1990,
the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act. This state of affairs mocks the memory of our
founders. \ It is plainly unjust. \ And I have only just begun
to make my voice heard on the need for redressing this injustice.
Finally, we must renew our protection against the
destructive forces of what Madison called factions -- what we
today call special interest groups. \ That is why I urge
profound reform of Congress's cumbersome committee system and its
overgrown and overly powerful staffs. That is why I urge
sweeping reform of our campaign finance laws. Unreformed, these
systems support selfish lobbying and pressure groups and impede
true popular sovereignty. 11
If we fail to heed Madison's warning against faction, we
will reap a whirlwind of social conflict, litigiousness, and
coercive government action. 11 It's up to us to choose: Do we
want to live in freedom and harmony -- or will we become slaves
to factional feuds pitting women against men, race against race,
and every sort of fevered single-issue activist against the
common good?
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The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have endured two
hundred years -- far longer than most nations' charters for
government. They have enabled us -- ten generations of Americans
-- to govern ourselves and keep ourselves free. They are not
simply dry ink markings on old brittle parchment -- they are the
civil spirit that animates the American nation. This spirit will
keep America alive for new generations only if each one of us
renews the habits of liberty and justice. The Republic that
Madison gave us will live for long years to come only if we keep
our culture committed to the civic virtues he so cherished.
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