Calvin Coolidge, the only American president born on the Fourth of July, gave a speech 92 years ago this Independence Day in which he famously called for the public to hold government to its standard, not the other way around.
“Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. … The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation,” Coolidge said on July 4, 1926.
“The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them,” he added.
President Trump campaigned on shrinking the federal government and is rolling back as many government regulations as former President Ronald Reagan did following Jimmy Carter’s administration. Both Trump and Reagan have touted the same concerns, that a growing government restricts business freedom and the economy.
Three former presidents, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, are remembered on the Fourth of July because they died on this day.
