ains yet to climb. We will not rest until every
American enjoys the fullness of freedom, dignity, and opportunity as our
birthright. It is our birthright as citizens of this great Republic, and
we'll meet this challenge.

These will be years when Americans have restored their confidence and
tradition of progress; when our values of faith, family, work, and
neighborhood were restated for a modern age; when our economy was
finally freed from government's grip; when we made sincere efforts at
meaningful arms reduction, rebuilding our defenses, our economy, and
developing new technologies, and helped preserve peace in a troubled
world; when Americans courageously supported the struggle for liberty,
self-government, and free enterprise throughout the world, and turned
the tide of history away from totalitarian darkness and into the warm
sunlight of human freedom.

My fellow citizens, our Nation is poised for greatness. We must do what
we know is right and do it with all our might. Let history say of us,
"These were golden years--when the American Revolution was reborn, when
freedom gained new life, when America reached for her best."

Our two-party system has served us well over the years, but never better
than in those times of great challenge when we came together not as
Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans united in a common cause.

Two of our Founding Fathers, a Boston lawyer named Adams and a Virginia
planter named Jefferson, members of that remarkable group who met in
Independence Hall and dared to think they could start the world over
again, left us an important lesson. They had become political rivals in
the Presidential election of 1800. Then years later, when both were
retired, and age had softened their anger, they began to speak to each
other again through letters. A bond was reestablished between those two
who had helped create this government of ours.

In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they
both died. They died on the same day, within a few hours of each other,
and that day was the Fourth of July.

In one of those letters exchanged in the sunset of their lives,
Jefferson wrote: "It carries me back to the times when, beset with
difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause,
struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to
self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever
ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passi