Bob Dole: “next Tuesday, in homes, neighborhoods, and communities across the country, Americans will celebrate Independence Day.…”

“next Tuesday, in homes, neighborhoods, and communities across the country, Americans will celebrate Independence Day. And since the Senate will not be in session on America's birthday, I wanted to take a minute today to share some very meaningful words with my colleagues. The words are not mine. Rather, they were first written in 1955, as a public relations advertisement for what is now the Norfolk Southern Corp. The words have been updated slightly since that time, and they eloquently encompass what America is all about. I was born on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The bloodlines of the world run in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed. I am many things, and many people. I am the Nation . . . I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Davy Crockett. I am Lee and Grant and Abe Lincoln. I remember the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor. When freedom called I answered and stayed until it was over, over there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slopes of Korea, and in the steaming jungles of Vietnam. I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat fields of Kansas, and the granite hills of Vermont. I am the coalfields of the Virginias and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the west, the Golden Gate and the Grand Canyon.”