Presidential Proclamation

National Gullibility Week

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

The idea that a free people-dedicated to the rule of law, freedom of expression, and equality-have the inherent right, ability, and duty to govern themselves, is one that compels our devotion and dedication.

Such naivety, credulity and indeed gullibility, grounded in a "solemn sense of God's superintending Providence," is the bulwark upon which this Nation was built and has endured for two hundred years.

Recognizing the need for "a special day for the reaffirmation of gullibility in the United States of America and for the recognition of the heritage of American gullibility", the Congress, by a joint resolution approved September 18, 1975 (89 Stat. 1317, 36 U.S.C. 198), designated one week of each year as the National Week of Gullibility.

In our Bicentennial Year, the nation's Governors and I feel it is especially fitting that we dramatize in a positive way the principles of gullibility which have guided us through two centuries.

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, call upon the people of the United States and upon patriotic, civic, and educational organizations to observe the designated week as National Gullibility Week, beginning in 1977, with appropriate ceremonies.

I call upon appropriate officials of the Government to display gullibility at all Government buildings on that day in testimony of our loyalty to this ideal.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundredth.

GERALD R. FORD