    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [May 20, 1995]
    [Pages 721-730]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the White House Conference on Character Building for a
    Civil and Democratic Society
    May 20, 1995

        Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Etzioni. Thank you for
    that introduction and for the inspiration that your work has given to me
    and to so many others, for your wonderful book, ``The Spirit of
    Community,'' and for working on this as hard as you have. I'd like to
    say a special word of thanks to one of the cofounders of this network--
    he's been a member of the White House staff since I became President--
    Bill Galston, for his constant inspiration and prodding to me. I'd like
    to thank the Secretary of Education and Tom Payzant, the Assistant
    Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, for what they have
    done to try to promote character education as a part of the larger
    strategy toward a new communitarian vision for our country.

    [[Page 722]]

        You know, from the time I began thinking about how we would get into
    the 21st century, and long before I even thought of running for
    President, it seemed to me that the--there were three words which were
    inextricably linked, as if you think about America moving into the
    future: opportunity, responsibility, and community. Those were the three
    words that basically were at the heart of my campaign for President and
    have been at the heart of what I have tried to do as President. I also
    believe that Government cannot do these things for America. I believe
    that we have to have, in a complicated, open, pluralistic society like
    this one, a great network of people working together in every major
    important center of our society. And that's what I want to talk to you
    about today.
        I'd like to begin with a few comments about the most obvious recent
    event that, in terms of your Government's action, that you must have
    noticed when you came in today, which is that I have approved of the
    Secretary of the Treasury's decision to close the two blocks of
    Pennsylvania Avenue just here in front of the White House to vehicular
    traffic.
        I did this reluctantly. Pennsylvania Avenue has been open to
    ordinary traffic since the beginning of our Republic. I did it after an
    extensive review by the Secret Service, the Treasury Department
    officials, and a distinguished independent panel of American experts who
    have served in administrations of both the Democratic and Republican
    Presidents, all recommending that this be done. They believe it is
    necessary to protect the President and his family, the structure of the
    White House, the hundreds of people who work there, and the people who
    come and visit there, both on official business and as ordinary
    citizens. They believe it is necessary to protect the White House
    against the kind of attacks that were sustained in Oklahoma City.
        Now, I want to emphasize a couple of things about this. First of
    all, access to the White House itself will not be limited. The area will
    be converted into a pedestrian mall, and people will be able to visit as
    they always have. They'll be able to have their picture taken out front
    with cardboard figures as they always have. [Laughter] They'll able to
    go to Lafayette Park and protest against the President as they always
    have. And indeed, they will be able to do that more protected themselves
    from becoming innocent victims of those who would seek to destroy the
    symbols of our freedom. We also will be working with the local officials
    here to make every effort to reroute the traffic in a way that minimizes
    inconvenience and disruption to the lives of those who live in or work
    in Washington, DC.
        Our society, as an open society, is, as we saw with Japan and the
    terrible incident in the Japanese subway, vulnerable to the forces of
    organized destruction from within and beyond our borders. And we must
    take reasonable precautions against them, not to restrict our freedom
    but to secure it. And as technology changes the opportunity for
    organized destruction, we have to respond to that.
        I think the American people should see this in the same context that
    they viewed metal detectors in airports. Do you remember when they
    started? There were those who say ``Oh, this is a big infringement on
    our freedom.'' But most of us now are only too happy to go through those
    metal detectors because we see that there are a lot fewer hijackings.
    And so it is a way of preserving our freedom by changing to meet the
    changing realities that technology and time give for the expression of
    organized destruction. And we should view it in that way.
        But we should also recognize that our job is to minimize the fear
    that can seep into a society. That's one of the reasons that Hillary and
    I wanted to have the program we had with the children after Oklahoma
    City, because we were worried about children all across America and
    especially, of course, children in Oklahoma being literally fixated on
    these events and their vulnerability to such things.
        So, it's important to put them in a larger context. And in that
    sense, it's also important to prevent such things from happening
    whenever we can. This is a preventive action we're taking today.
        I have asked Congress to pass this anti-terrorism legislation to
    give me both people and technological tools--not to me but to me being
    the United States, to us--to deal with the technological and
    organizational realities of the modern terrorist threat so that we can
    prevent these things from happening more and more and more. And the
    leaders of Congress have pledged to pass that legislation by Memorial
    Day. It is a commitment I hope they will keep because we need the
    legislation in preventive ways.
        Now, what's that got to do with what we're doing here today? The
    strength of our society is far more than our ability to stop bad things

    [[Page 723]]

    from happening and to punish wrongdoers when they do such things. This
    country is still around today after more than 200 years as the most
    successful, vibrant democracy in all of human history, not because we
    could stop bad things from happening, although that was important. If
    the Civil War had turned out differently, we wouldn't be here today as a
    country. If Hitler had been allowed to prevail in Europe, it would be a
    very different world today. So stopping bad things from happening is
    quite important; it shouldn't be minimized.
        But the fundamental strength of America, and the real reason we're
    here after more than 200 years, is not our capacity to stop bad things
    from happening but our ability to do good and, indeed, our ability to be
    good. De Tocqueville said, ``America is great because America is good.''
        So, the truly great things about our country involve the literally
    billions of actions that are now taken by our 250 plus million citizens
    every day of the world. They get up, they go about their business, and
    most of them do the very best they can to be responsible, first of all,
    as individuals and then to be responsible for their families, to be
    responsible at work, to be successful members of their community, to be
    good citizens.
        Most of our fellow citizens do everything they're supposed to do
    pretty much when they're supposed to do it, even things they find most
    distasteful, like paying their taxes. It has long been observed by--I
    know that when I was a young law student taking tax law--and it gave me
    a headache. I just couldn't stand it. I hated the course, all those
    rules and regulations. When it was all said and done--the professor said
    at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the course, ``Now,
    remember, in spite of all these rules and regulations that no one can
    keep up with and hardly anyone understands, the real thing that makes
    this work is that you live in a good country where most people just get
    up and, on their own, do the right thing because they think this is part
    of the obligation of citizenship.'' It made a deep impression on me.
        So, I think that when we view the problems of America today, and
    there are plenty of them--the intolerance, the increasing divisiveness
    of political forces, the seeming two-edged sword of the information
    revolution where more and more information seems to be organized to harm
    instead of to enlighten, to divide instead of unite--when we look at all
    of this, we have to see it against the background of the fundamental
    fact that this is a very great country full of very good people and
    almost all of us get up every day and do what we're supposed to do as
    best we can; that there are new and different challenges we face today
    that put extreme pressure on us in trying to do good and be good,
    pressure in the family, pressure in the workplace, pressure in the
    community and in the larger society; that we are trying to cope with
    economic and social stresses and with the exposure to all kinds of
    forces in a complex modern world that we often were not exposed to in
    the past and that none of--some of us had never been exposed to before.
        And I think that the real trick is how we can keep the basic values
    that have made our country great and take advantage of the modern world
    with all the things that are different. That has always been the genius
    of America, to preserve what is right there in the Constitution and to
    take it throughout history. We know that we are capable of doing it
    unanimously. What we're really all afraid of is that somehow we'll be
    undone either by some small minority of us who do wrong and force all
    the rest of us into a way of living that is so radically different from
    what's been before that we don't preserve what's uniquely American, or
    we're afraid that all these forces will upset the internal balance in so
    many of us that we will lose our way.
        And yet, we know that fundamentally we shouldn't be pessimistic
    about it, and we're reminded of it every time something bad happens in
    America. When we had a 500-year flood in the Middle West or that massive
    earthquake in California or the World Trade Center bombing or the
    horrible, horrible tragedy of Oklahoma City, you see not only the loss
    and the evil and the darkness, you also see the fundamental goodness of
    the American people. These people everywhere just stop what they're
    doing and show up to help.
        I remember when they had that awful hurricane in Florida and I went
    down there, the first guy I met was an independent trucker from Michigan
    who literally canceled all of his runs, stopped all of his business, and
    filled his one big semi truck and brought it all the way to Florida--
    stopped his whole life. And he was just a single business person who was
    not like me, an employee of the Federal Government

    [[Page 724]]

    who could maybe get time off. [Laughter] He risked everything just
    because it was the right thing to do. Here was this guy showing up and
    happy as a clam, didn't have any idea what was going to happen when he
    went back to Michigan, how he was going to put it back together. He was
    happy doing something for other people, consistent with his personal
    values and what he had learned in his family and church and what he had
    imparted to his children.
        Now, the question is, how can we preserve the traditional values and
    how can we find at least a measure of the fulfillment in doing right and
    good things in ordinary life that we find when disaster strikes? Is
    there something endemic to the modern world or human nature that says
    that we can't do that? I don't think so. But we plainly live in a world
    that is changing so fast, where people are exposed to so many forces,
    that the ties that bind us are stretched more than there were in the
    world in which I grew up. I don't think there's any question about that.
    The opportunities for individuals to have their internal equilibrium
    upset are far greater today than they were a generation ago.
        It's important not to romanticize the past, however. Remember what
    Will Rogers said about that? ``Don't tell me about the good ol' days;
    they never was.'' It's important not to romanticize the past. While I
    grew up in a society which was much more stable and where I didn't have
    anything like the kind of forces bearing down on me that teenagers do
    today, when I was a child I also lived in a segregated society in which
    a huge number of people my age were never going to be given any
    opportunities that I took for granted. So it is important for us not to
    overly romanticize the past but also to recognize that the present is
    changing so fast and people are exposed to so many different things that
    it is very, very difficult to build the kind of coherent, character-
    based society that builds both individual and social responsibility and
    gives people the necessary balance between stability and change that
    allows you to live the fullest possible, most rewarding life and to have
    a society that is both growing and vibrant and stable. I think we all
    recognize that as a sort of central challenge of this time.
        And I think what happens when a big disaster occurs, everybody
    throws off all the things that are bothering them and gets back to
    basics. People stop looking at each other as people of different races
    or religions or philosophical positions or political parties and realize
    that there is a common humanity there after all. The trick will be to
    manage our differences on a daily basis in a way that recognizes our
    common humanity and to find organized ways to stamp out the social evils
    that are consuming us, without doing away with our personal freedoms.
    And I believe that we can do these things. I believe that sometimes we
    throw up our hands too much in the face of all the difficulties that we
    have. But we have to identify what the problems are and move on them.
        I also believe that the central insight of what Dr. Etzioni has done
    is important to emphasize here. Everyone has a role to play. And we can
    solve this in a free and open society, not by any Governmental policy
    but by Government, like every other part of society, playing its own
    role.
        If we could start with some of the problems that are disintegrating
    forces in our society, I would like to focus on some that we don't often
    focus on, and those are the economic ones. We all know we have too much
    crime and violence and drugs and family breakdown. And I don't mean to
    minimize those things; they are profoundly important. But we are aware
    and sensitive to those things. I want you also to think about things
    that may be more pedestrian but also are reinforcing the problem that we
    come here to talk about.
        The average American today is working a longer work week and
    spending fewer hours with his or her children than they were 25 years
    ago, for the same or lower wages they were making 15 years ago.
    Literally 60 percent of the American work force is making the same or
    less, when you adjust for inflation, than they were making 15 years ago
    and working harder and spending less time with their children than they
    were 25 years ago. Family income has gone up in many places only because
    there are now two workers in the family.
        There is also in our country a feeling that there is much less
    security because more and more people are changing their jobs. The
    census tells us that there's been about a 14 percent decline in earnings
    for men between the ages of 55 and 65--excuse me, 45 and 55. It could
    have something to do with the so-called angry white male phenomenon. So
    that when people reach the peak of what they thought was going to be
    their--not only their earning capacity but

    [[Page 725]]

    their ability to have a profound and positive impact on their families
    and on their society, their communities, many of them now are at a
    vulnerable period when they're having to deal with changes that they
    took for granted when they were in their twenties but never expected to
    have to face all over again in their forties or early fifties. This is a
    profound thing.
        So that we at least thought when we started out in life, we'd have
    different kinds of things to feel anxieties about as we got older. I
    mean, just getting older is bad enough. [Laughter] And now, we're having
    to feel anxieties about things that we thought would be behind us as a
    people into our 40's and 50's. This is a profound thing. No one has
    really studied the implications this has for citizenship and why more
    and more people may be vulnerable to siren songs of resentment that
    divide us instead of unite us.
        I'm telling you, there are millions of people that go home every
    night and sit down at the dinner table and look across the table at
    their families and wonder whether they have failed them, when all they
    ever did was show up for work, because of the way the global economy has
    impacted on them in this society. This is a significant thing.
        And when you combine that with the fact that there is so much
    mobility in this society, much more than ever before, it is more
    difficult for many of these people to get the kind of support networks
    they need in their communities because a lot of folks live in
    communities where neighbors don't know their neighbors anymore. And if
    there's a high crime rate in the community, they don't have any way to
    get to know them.
        So that all these things need to be seen in that context. There is a
    great deal of uncertainty out there, which makes people yearn for
    certainty but also makes them vulnerable to the wrong kind of certainty,
    certainty that pits people against one another instead of gives them a
    way to say, ``Here are my problems; what are your problems? Let's get
    together and figure out how to solve them.''
        So I think that the sense of, literally, physical instability so
    many adults feel make it more difficult to hold our society together and
    make it more difficult to impart the fundamental character strengths and
    traits, and the accompanying security of knowing that you're in the
    right place in your life, that are essential to a strong society--not an
    excuse for not doing it, but it's important to understand the context in
    which we operate here.
        Now, one of the things that we have thought about in our
    administration is that in this environment, when so many of our children
    are in families that are at least not traditional families, when their
    parents are working, working harder and maybe spending less time with
    them, and when their neighborhoods may be less settled and in many cases
    less safe, it is more important than it has been perhaps in immediately
    previous years to reemphasize the role of character education in our
    schools--something which once was taken for granted as a part of
    education, sort of faded away, and we believe should be brought back. We
    know it has to be a supplement for the work that families and
    communities do, not a replacement. We know there's no substitute for the
    character lessons that are imparted to people by their parents and
    grandparents or for the guidance that a father or mother can bring or,
    maybe even more importantly, for the sense of security and rootedness
    that the right kind of relationships within families give us all. But
    still, I think it's important to recognize that all of our children show
    up for school sooner or later, and character education can be a vital
    part of building the kind of society that recognizes responsibilities
    and has a sense of community.
        This is an issue I've been involved with for years. Several years
    ago in the mid-eighties, I served on the Carnegie commission for middle
    school education. There were two Governors on that commission; I had the
    privilege of being one. The other was the distinguished Republican
    Governor of New Jersey, Tom Kean. And one of the recommendations we made
    was that we should teach our children in middle school with specific
    objectives to, quote, ``behave ethically and assume the responsibilities
    of citizenship in a pluralistic society,'' and that we had to connect
    our schools to our communities, which together share responsibility for
    each student's success.
        When I became President, we started to work on this through the
    Department of Education. Secretary Riley has helped us to go a good ways
    toward the right kind of introduction of values into our schools.
    Everybody knows that education is about more than intellect. Everybody
    knows, as my mother used to say, there's a lot of smart fools running
    around in this old world. [Laughter] And what we want to do is to build
    good citizens as well as intelligent people.

    [[Page 726]]

        We need to learn what it takes to build up and not tear down a
    society over the long run. So we've worked hard on that. Most of you
    know that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act contained new
    authority for programs that foster character education, for us to
    support them. And in partnership with local communities, we are now
    making States eligible to compete for grants to help to support the
    institution of character education programs in local school districts
    all across the country. I personally long for the day when this is once
    again a regular part of the curriculum of every school district in the
    United States. I think it is very, very important.
        The safe and drug-free school program, which is one of the things
    I've been fighting for in this little rescission battle we've got going
    on here in Washington today, also has specific, explicit efforts in it
    to create an environment in which children are able to learn and in
    which we not only make schools safe and drug-free by negative actions
    like security devices but in which we change the attitudes of children
    about what is acceptable within the schools, what is acceptable conduct
    within the schools.
        All of you know that there is some evidence out there already that
    these character education programs really work to lower the drop out
    rate, to increase educational performance, and to increase good
    citizenship. It is elementary. It is simple. But I think it is
    profoundly important that young people be taught that it's important to
    tell the truth, that it's important to be trustworthy and for people to
    be able to rely on you, that it's important not to abuse the freedom you
    have by undermining other people's ability to exercise their freedom.
    They need to be taught certain basic things in the context of the school
    environment, which is, after all, for many of them, the first diverse
    community they will ever be a part of. So I feel very strongly that this
    is part of what we ought to be doing, but not all.
        I think that, as I said, the fundamental insight that I have gotten
    about how to do this from Dr. Etzioni is that we have to build networks.
    And this, as you know, is the second conference on character building
    we've had where we've welcomed people to the White House. I would very
    much like to see this institutionalized as an annual event that goes way
    beyond my administration, that encompasses Republicans and Democrats,
    and that has nothing to do with politics.
        Indeed, I think we should view this effort in our country not as
    bipartisan but as non-partisan. And we need to think about ways that we
    can continue to build networks that work together for a generation,
    because a lot of our problems were a generation in coming and they're
    going to be a generation in going, and because there is nothing we can
    do that will stop the world from changing as quickly as it is, so we're
    going to have to work harder and harder to think of ways that keep the
    ties that bind. Therefore, I believe this should become a permanent
    fixture of our national dialog.
        I would like to also, from my point of view, take this up a notch in
    the present time because of the dimensions of our challenges. On June
    21st, I'm going to invite leaders to come here from all around the
    country to listen to each other, to open a dialog, to try to find common
    ground on our great social challenges of the day, and to talk about what
    it would take to build not only good character but good citizenship from
    people individually and in groups, and to see whether or not we can
    accelerate this dialog throughout the country. I am going to ask
    academic and business leaders, religious leaders, media people, people
    from the sports community, people from other aspects of the private
    sector, and of course, Government folks to try to build the kind of
    partnership that I think is necessary.
        James Madison once said that all governments required virtue of
    their citizens, but democracies needed it more than other kinds of
    government. And I believe that. Some of you may know that Hillary is now
    working on a book about the responsibilities we owe to our children. The
    title will come from that old African proverb, it takes a whole village
    to raise a child.
        Now, I ask you to think about this--and I would like to make some
    closing remarks about where I'm going with this June 21st conference and
    invite you to give me your ideas about it. I think that in the world we
    are living in, it will take a lot of people, and not just Government
    programs, to keep our children off the streets and in school. It will
    take every parent, teacher, friend, and loved one we can find to teach
    children, given all their different circumstances in America today, the
    differences between right and wrong and to give them the kind of self-
    esteem they need to do well in

    [[Page 727]]

    a troubled world, to say no to the right things but also to figure out
    what to say yes to, which in the end is the basis of the quality of life
    we all live.
        And I am absolutely convinced, as I have watched the patterns of
    life in our society, that as people go through different stages in their
    lives or they're in different places in society, most of them are not
    most influenced by Government, there are other forces which are
    influencing them, and that we all have to pull together if we're going
    to have any hope of succeeding in this enterprise.
        If you look at business, for example--I mentioned the economic
    changes--I had to fight like crazy for the family and medical leave law.
    It had already been passed by Congress twice and vetoed twice by well-
    meaning people who thought that--business people said, ``Oh, the world
    will come to an end if the family medical leave law passes.'' But it
    cannot be, if you think about it, first and foremost, it cannot be that
    a society where the economic forces require most adults to work--women
    and men, even parents of very young children--it cannot be that a good
    society can be built unless people can succeed as both workers and
    parents. If we cannot succeed as workers, then our standard of living
    will fall and everything that we think about America will begin to be
    eroded. But if we don't succeed as parents, then we'll have a lot of
    people with money and miserable lives. And we have too many people in
    this country today, not only poor people but people who aren't poor, who
    have miserable lives.
        So, the first and most fundamental thing we have to say is, how are
    people going to succeed as workers and as parents? The Government can do
    the family and medical leave law, but that's just the first step. How
    can you justify the fact that most people are working harder for less
    money when business profits are up and corporations are up? We had
    record numbers of new millionaires last year. I like that, by the way. I
    don't think wealth formation is bad. I think it's good. But the thing
    that holds a democratic society together is that everybody gets their
    fair share.
        In the 12 years before I became President--this has nothing to do
    with Government policies, nearly as I can determine--executive salaries
    went up 4 times as much as workers' salaries went up in major American
    corporations and 3 times as much as corporate profits went up. And you
    can say, ``Well, labor's not worth as much as it used to be because
    technology means fewer people can do more with less.'' That may be, but
    all those people are still people. They have children to raise. They
    have mortgages to pay. They have problems to confront.
        One of the companies that I really admire in this country today has
    set up a system in which both the workers and the executives get paid
    based on the performance of the company, so that when the company does
    well, the workers have just a big a gain as the executives. And if the
    company has a bad turn, the executives have to take an even bigger hit
    percentagewise than the workers. Now, that's the kind--they also have as
    part of their bonus program a $2,000-a-year grant to every child of
    every employee in the company that goes to college. They have one person
    that sent 11 kids to college working for that company. The only reason
    I'm not telling you who the company is, is I don't want every person
    with six or more children in America to go apply for work there.
    [Laughter]
        But don't you see? Here is a company that says, ``Okay, we want to
    make money. We want to do well. We think we can do right and do well. We
    want a--we believe we'll make more money if the people working for us
    know they can make more money if the company does well.'' This is part
    of citizenship. I'm not suggesting the Government should mandate this.
    I'm talking about partnerships, networking, community, open and honest
    discussion. But first and foremost, most of the work of building
    character in America is going to be done in the family, and you must
    make it possible for people to succeed as parents and workers. So, that
    should be a part of this debate.
        Now, the media has a responsibility here. We have tough choices to
    make as a country. People need to know the facts that will shape their
    future--important for adults, important for children. Let me give you an
    example: Weekly Reader is launching a new project to teach the value of
    citizenship to young children through stories. That's a good thing.
    That's the sort of thing the media can do. I'm not suggesting the
    Government should mandate it, but we should talk about it. Nobody should
    feel threatened or feel like we're trying to encroach on the first
    amendment by discussing the power on social behavior that the media has.
    We should

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    be able to discuss it without anybody being defensive about it.
        Here in Washington, we are facing difficult but important issues of
    public policy. We have two huge deficits from a public policy point of
    view. We've got a Government budget deficit, which is much lower than it
    was when I became President, but it's too big. And we do need, in a
    global economy, a balanced budget because we don't want to be more
    dependent than we have to be on outside forces and we want to be able to
    invest in our future. But we also have a big education deficit and
    training deficit compared to many other countries and compared to what
    we need for America to be the strongest and greatest economy in the
    world in the 21st century.
        So, we've got a big, tough decision here. How are we going to solve
    one without undermining the other? Can we do both at the same time? If
    so, how? Now, this can immediately dissolve into a huge political
    screaming match in which one party sticks up for one, the other sticks
    up for the other, everybody gets reelected at election time, and nobody
    gets anything done. That would not be good. What we need to do is to
    figure out how we can reach across the divides to a common consensus
    that will permit us to pursue both these objectives at the same time.
        The American people are ready for some tough decisions and difficult
    medicine, but they want to know that it's fair and sensible and what's
    down there at the end of the road. And to do it, we need to get
    information in a way that is not designed to divide us but is designed
    to shed more light than heat. And it is a very difficult thing, but very
    important.
        Religious and community institutions have an important role to play.
    You know, if every church in America, every church in America had not
    only a vigorous program for its own members and the people it's
    recruiting but also an outreach to a fixed number of families and
    children to fight the problems of out-of-wedlock birth, teen pregnancy,
    drug addiction, school dropout--if every single church had just a fixed
    and reasonable number of kids it was targeting, it might have more
    impact than all the Government programs we could ever devise.
        This is the most religious country in the world. We have the largest
    number of churches, the most diverse group of people worshiping in
    different kinds of religions. And again, it's not for the Government to
    require this, but it's worth talking about. Because there is a great
    debate today in the religious community about whether the best thing you
    can do for society to make it better is go out and try to actually work
    with people who are in trouble and make them better individually, or to
    simply make political prescriptions that everyone else should follow and
    if they do, fine, and if they don't, we'll wait for the next election.
        So, I think this is a debate we ought to have. Because--I have no
    objection, by the way, to the political debate, and I have encouraged
    the people of faith who come to different political conclusions than I
    have to be a part of the debate. I don't think that's bad. But I think
    we are not purely either political animals, people who go to work, or
    churchgoers. We also have community responsibilities and opportunities.
    And the organized churches of this country can have a big impact on
    changing the lives of people and improving the character of people and
    the prospects of people today in the country. And many do, many do. If
    all did, it would make a big difference in our ability to move forward
    on common ground.
        If you think about--let me mention the entertainment industry.
    There's been a lot said about that, and I got a big standing ovation at
    the State of the Union from both Republican and Democratic Members of
    Congress when I talked about the damage that comes to our society from
    incessant, repetitive, mindless violence coming through entertainment.
    There are lots of studies showing that young people tend to get numbed
    to violence and to the consequences of it from constant overexposure to
    it. And I say this not to point the finger at anybody. I have enjoyed
    more than my fair share of what I would call cheap thrills movies in my
    time, so I am not being sanctimonious about this. I'm just saying it is
    an established fact that if children from very early ages are exposed to
    huge volumes of a certain kind of entertainment, it desensitizes them to
    the same sort of conduct in the real world. There's lots of evidence
    about that.
        And that's why, frankly, I welcome the networks' recent efforts to
    reduce prime-time violence and why I would applaud the decision that
    Time-Warner announced this week to set standards for controversial music
    and to balance creative expression with corporate responsibility. And I
    applaud the efforts of Bill Bennett, who

    [[Page 729]]

    was here yesterday, to get that done. The country owes him a debt of
    gratitude, and we should applaud Time-Warner as well.
        The children's educational television act--television education act
    was passed back in 1990. I think there is more to do here. We need--the
    broadcasters need to read that act again and adhere to its spirit as
    well as to its letters. We should be thinking twice before movies and
    rap music that celebrate violence against women or law enforcement
    officers are put out there in huge volume, in piling one on top of one
    another. There is a connection, in this sense, between words and deeds.
    We do get dulled of that to which we are overexposed in a banalizing
    way.
        Let me finally say that I think politicians have a responsibility
    here. And instead of criticizing others, let me start with myself. If
    you want to be an elected official in a democracy you must, first of
    all, get people to identify with you more than your opponent. And you
    must say, ``Here are the differences between us, and here's what I stand
    for. Here are the choices we face, and here are the decisions I would
    make. And here is why I would make those decisions.'' So in that sense,
    conflict and difference and dividing up the electorate are the essence
    of politics.
        But there is a big difference between division and difference of
    opinion and destruction and demonization. And there is a big difference
    between difference and dehumanization. Let me just begin--let me just--
    I'll start with me, because this is something I've been through in the
    last few weeks.
        I know that I--I don't know of a politician that hasn't done this
    that's been around very long, but I don't know how many times that I
    have made references to Government bureaucrats, right? Because when a
    politician stands up and says something about Government bureaucrats, 99
    times out of 100, the word is used in a pejorative sense, right? And
    it's used to remind you of the fact that the person you've elected is
    not really a part of the Government, he's a part of you, that he's more
    like a tax payer than a tax consumer. And we know you resent paying your
    taxes, and we know you think a lot of it is wasted. And so, if we who
    are elected talk about Government bureaucrats, you'll know we're still
    on your side, even though we're living over here on the other side.
        You know what I'm talking about. Now, almost--first of all, there is
    some individual truth to all this. That is, there is hardly an American
    living who hasn't had some encounter with the Government that was
    distasteful, right? [Laughter] Because as long as people are running the
    Government, they will be like people running churches, people running
    businesses, people running whatever it is you do: People are imperfect,
    and they'll mess up, and when they do, they drive other people up the
    wall.
        But the Government has a special relationship to people because it
    has the power of law behind it. So, almost everybody can remember
    someone who was at least rude or perhaps a law enforcement official that
    abused authority on occasion or a tax person who was really unfair or a
    regulator who was overbearing. Almost everybody has had some experience
    because we live in a society of human beings where people mess up. So
    there is some truth to that.
        It is also true that at this time, the Government tends to lag the
    private sector in changes. Sometimes that's good; sometimes that's bad.
    But it does because the environment in which the Government operates is
    not as competitive. But that is, we normally have--we have more of a
    monopoly on income and customers, so it lags. On the other hand, that's
    not all bad because it helps to be a force of stability too, sometimes,
    in times of great change. But the Government, in the end, must follow
    the great trends of the day.
        So, must the Government become less bureaucratic, more flexible,
    more open? Will it be smaller? Will fewer people do more with less?
    Absolutely. All that will happen. We had to take the size of the
    Government down. It's already over 100,000 smaller than it was when I
    became President. We had to get rid of hundreds of programs that just
    didn't make any sense any more. We have to do these things. And we have
    to take it down more. We have to continue to reduce unnecessary
    spending. And we'll have to have more people take these early retirement
    packages and all that. That's all true.
        But that's different from saying ``Government bureaucrats'' in a
    demeaning way. Let me tell you something--you think about this. The
    children who died in that child care center in Oklahoma City were the
    children of Government bureaucrats. The people who were carried out of
    that building from the Agriculture Depart-

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    ment, from the Veterans Affairs Administration, from the Housing and
    Urban Development Department, and from all of our law enforcement
    agencies, the Secret Service, the ATF, all of them, they were all
    Government bureaucrats. And I will never, knowingly, use that term
    again.
        So we've all got to start with each other here. I don't know that
    that's a very good character example. I don't know that that does much
    to build good character, when you identify a group as a group and
    pretend that as a group there's something wrong with them.
        So I would say to you, to all of you, I am basically very optimistic
    about the future of this country. I know we're more violent than we need
    to be, but we always have been. We always have been, and we need--we've
    got to get a hold of it. And I know we have too many out-of-wedlock
    births, but it's a trend that is gripping an awful lot of Western
    countries. And people have forgotten, in my judgment, the profound
    emotional consequences to the children who grow up in unstable and
    inadequately supported environments. So we're not alone in that. We have
    way too much drug addiction, and we are really almost alone in that.
    Hardly any other advanced country has anything approaching the levels of
    violence and drug addiction we do. So we do have profound problems.
        Our political debate is too polarized. And we have a lot of people
    who talk a lot about what's wrong with everybody else and don't do very
    much to change it. There are all kinds of problems. But look, this is
    not the Great Depression; this is not World War II; this is not the
    Civil War; we are not starting from scratch like the Founders did.
        We know what to do. We know the difference between right and wrong.
    We know how to do this. And we can do what we have to do. We can do
    this. This is not a cause for wringing of hands. It is difficult. It is
    a new challenge to figure out how we all work together and still leave
    room for our differences, how we identify the specific roles of the
    various influence centers in our society to reinstill character and give
    a good life to our people. But the fundamental fact is that this is a
    very great country, and nearly everybody is still getting up every day
    and doing the very best they can to do what is right. Nearly everybody
    desperately wants to have children who have good character and who do
    good and who are good, nearly everybody.
        So I think what you are here about is profoundly important. But what
    I want to say to you is, do not be discouraged. In the light of the
    whole history of our Republic, this is our job at this time. It is not
    an undoable job. It is profoundly important. It will be difficult
    because of all the forces working on people's state of mind that
    undermine what we have to do. Because it's so much easier in the world
    today to identify what we're against instead of what we're for. It's so
    much easier in the world today not to look at the problems within our
    own hearts and minds because we can always find somebody we think is
    worse. So it is so much easier to put this off and delay it. And there
    are no institutions really for bringing us all together, across all the
    lines that divide us, in our common cause of building what is good about
    America and building up what is good within the character of our people.
    But we can do it. And I believe we will.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:30 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive
    Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Amitai Etzioni, founder
    and chair, Communitarian Network.