Our Unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, on Saturday we will celebrate the Independence Day of our country. In our Chamber we have photographs of Lafayette and George Washington. In the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, it reads: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.''

Unfortunately, those words were not complete because African Americans were not considered men, and they were not given the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are still pursuing that. We did it with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and we are doing it in other ways with opportunities for African Americans.

And as we said in the founding of our country, that we are becoming a more perfect union, and we continue to do that today; to see to it that all men and women have certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Hopefully, we will remember that on Saturday, and remember that the reason why we cut ourselves off from King George is because we wanted to be a Nation of a rule of laws and not a Nation of a rule of man. That was worth people signing the Declaration, putting their lives at risk, and founding the United States of America.

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