Bill of Rights Day

Floor Speech

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, today is the 220th anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights. It was declared Bill of Rights Day by Franklin Roosevelt back in the forties and it's an anniversary that's too often overlooked.

Ken Paulsen, the President of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tennessee, at Vanderbilt University's campus and the American Society of News Editors, recently wrote that the Bill of Rights is ``a document that guarantees core personal liberties, including freedom of expression and faith, a fair judicial process, the right to bear arms, and protection against unreasonable government seizures ..... yet almost no one takes time to reflect on the importance of December 15th and the anniversary of these fundamental freedoms,'' and particularly what they really are. That's why I wanted to come to the well today and spend a few minutes reflecting on this amazing document and the freedoms that we derive from it.

It's easy to take our Bill of Rights for granted. Of course we have the right to speak our minds. We don't live in fear that the police will break down our doors without exigent circumstances or a warrant. It would be ridiculous to imagine a church of America to which we all must belong and to which we must worship according to its dictates; but you only need to look across the globe to the Arab Spring and elsewhere to see millions of people protesting and risking their lives just to have a taste of the freedoms we take for granted, and you realize how fortunate we are.

When the Constitution was ratified, there were very few individual rights guaranteed. It was mostly about setting up the structure of government. But Thomas Jefferson and others argued that the Bill of Rights was necessary to protect individuals from their government. Think about how wise the Founders were to ensure that the very government they were establishing would not encroach on certain fundamental liberties of the people. As Jefferson wrote in letter to James Madison, ``a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on Earth.''

Since Jefferson was not part of that Constitutional Convention, James Madison took up the task of drafting a bill of rights. After much debate and compromise, 10 amendments were approved and added to the Constitution. Right at the very beginning, we find the bedrock of the Bill of Rights, the great five freedoms of the First Amendment: religion, freedom of speech, press, to peacefully assemble, and petition of government. Those are the most basic freedoms we have, but they're not always without controversy.

From the so-called ``War on Christmas'' to government-led prayer in school, we continue to debate what the free exercise of religion and the establishment clause meant. And that is not new.

Thomas Jefferson found himself deep in the war over religious liberty as well. In response to attacks that he was insufficiently religious, he wrote in a letter to Benjamin Rush, ``For I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'' He went on to explain in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists that there is ``a wall of separation between church and State'' since ``religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God.''

But that does not put the issue to rest. We continue to wrestle with these issues today. But the Bill of Rights, particularly the First Amendment, is what enables us to work our differences out peacefully through the democratic process.

We have the right to speak our mind without fear that the government will stifle dissent. We have the ability to hold our government accountable with a vibrant free press because an informed citizenry is what keeps democracy strong. And we have the right to protest when we're dissatisfied with our government.

Whether it's actions by the Tea Party or the Occupy movements, the people are exercising their right to assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances. As elected officials, it's up to us to consider their causes while also protecting their rights.

I remember back in 1993 when I was a Tennessee State senator, in one week I stood on the legislative plaza and I defended the Second Amendment urging the passage of Tennessee's right to carry bill, and the next week I was on the plaza supporting a woman's right to choose, which comes through the

Ninth Amendment. No two people of either of those rallies were the same; they were indeed very different. But what they were advocating was both in the Bill of Rights, and both supported such and the Bill of Rights supported them.
I have devoted much of my career to fighting for fairness in our criminal justice system. It's the Bill of Rights that builds fundamental fairness into that system, particularly the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. It guarantees that we'll have a reasonable bail, a fair chance to prove our innocence, have a lawyer, be able to question witnesses, and, if convicted, we won't be subject to torture or other cruel and unusual punishments.

The Bill of Rights embodies the core values of this Nation: freedom, fairness, justice, and equality.

We need to remember, though, that we have not always upheld those values. For example, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that we won't be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. But many of the same people who drafted the Bill of Rights and the Constitution owned slaves, treated them as property, and gave them no rights whatsoever. It took almost 100 years to abolish slavery and almost another 100 years to get beyond the Jim Crow laws that continued such.

We must honor the Bill of Rights and respect it for what it has done and recognize it today.

I thank Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and others who gave us the Bill of Rights; and I swore upon the altar of God, eternal hostility toward all forms of tyranny over the mind of man.

We must always strive toward that ``more perfect union'' discussed in the preamble of the Constitution.

That's why we should be thankful for the organizations that fight each day to defend the Bill of Rights and our freedoms.

You may not always agree with them, but groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way, and the Freedom Forum, are on the front lines defending our rights, even when it means taking unpopular positions.

Every day, we're touched by the Bill of Rights, but too often we fail to recognize its importance.

I hope my colleagues, and all Americans, will take time today to think about the Bill of Rights and how lucky we are to live in a country that guarantees us the liberty and freedoms enshrined in that document.

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