Proclamation 4173—Bill of Rights Day and Human Rights Day and Week

The ink was barely dry on the Constitution of the United States of America in the autumn of 1787 when leading patriots and statesmen of the young Republic took up the cry for amendments affording written guarantees of basic human freedoms under the proposed national government. "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth . . ." Thomas Jefferson wrote, "and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference."

The idea that every individual was endowed by his Creator with rights no sovereign or majority could take away was thought dangerous and radical over much of the globe in those days, but it ran deep in the American grain even then. The very first Congress proposed a Bill of Rights, and by 1791 its proposals had become the first ten amendments to our Constitution.

Since that time, exactly as James Madison predicted to Jefferson that they would do, "the political truths declared in that solemn manner (have acquired) by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free government." They have inspired our own Nation's accelerating efforts to assure every American full equality and dignity before the law, and they have shone as a beacon for the rising aspirations of peoples around the world.

Finally in 1948, a little more than a century and a half after American freedoms were enshrined in the supreme law of this land, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved by the United Nations General Assembly to assert the inalienable liberties of all men and women in every land.

Symbolic of the common principles and shared spirit which link these two great charters is the fact that the anniversaries of their adoption occur less than one week apart each December. As we observe those anniversaries once again this year, let us gratefully take stock of the progress made in realizing the full promise of freedom for America and the world, and let us renew our commitment to continuing that progress during 1973.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim December 15, 1972, as Bill of Rights Day, and December 10, 1972, as Human Rights Day, and I call upon the American people to observe the week beginning December 10, 1972, as Human Rights Week. I ask every American to make this observance a time of rededication to the cherished values embodied in our Bill of Rights and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of December, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-seventh.

RICHARD NIXON