Bill of Rights Day, 2012

Vol. 77

Wednesday,

No. 244

December 19, 2012

Part V

The President

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Proclamation 8916--Bill of Rights Day, 2012

Proclamation 8917--Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy in Newtown,
Connecticut

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 8916 of December 14, 2012

Bill of Rights Day, 2012

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the
150th anniversary of our Nation's Bill of Rights, he
called it the ``great American charter of personal
liberty and human dignity.'' He understood that the
freedoms it protects--among them speech, worship,
assembly, and due process--are freedoms that reinforce
one another. They form the bedrock of the American
promise, and we cannot fully realize one without
realizing them all. Today, as we work to reinforce
human rights at home and around the globe, we reaffirm
our belief that government of the people, by the
people, and for the people inspires the stability and
individual opportunity that serve as a basis for peace
in our world.

In adopting the 10 Constitutional Amendments that make
up the Bill of Rights, the Framers sought to balance
the power and security of a new Federal Government with
a guarantee of our most basic civil liberties. They
acted on a conviction that rings as true today as it
did two centuries ago: Unlocking a nation's potential
depends on empowering all its people. The Framers also
called upon posterity to carry on their work--to keep
our country moving forward and bring us ever closer to
a more perfect Union.

Generations of patriots have taken up that challenge.
They have been defenders who stood watch at freedom's
frontier, marchers who broke down barriers to full
equality, dreamers who pushed America from what it was
toward what it ought to be. Now it falls to us to build
on their work. On Bill of Rights Day, we celebrate the
liberties secured by our forebears, pay tribute to all
who have fought to protect and expand our civil rights,
and rededicate ourselves to driving a new century of
American progress.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim December 15, 2012, as
Bill of Rights Day. I call upon the people of the
United States to mark these observances with
appropriate ceremonies and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
fourteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord two
thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.