    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [February 11, 1998]
    [Pages 211-212]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 211]]

    Remarks at the First Millennium Evening at the White House
    February 11, 1998

        The President. Thank you very much, Professor Bailyn, for that wonderful, wonderful lecture. I thank the
    First Lady and Ellen Lovell for conceiving this entire Millennium series. The
    others will have a hard act to follow.
        I can't think of a better way to inaugurate this series of lectures
    than with one on the founding of our Republic, also the first White
    House cyberspace lecture. We are truly imagining--honoring the past, not
    by imagining the future but through the prism of the future.
        I thank Bernard Bailyn for what he said
    and the way he said it and for a lifetime of work. We received the
    distilled wisdom tonight of more than four decades of hard thinking and
    work about what it means to be an American and what America means to
    Americans and to the rest of the world.
        I was rather amused--he said, ``You know, when we started, we had
    all these people who came from a lot of different places; they moved
    around a lot; they disagreed a lot; they were disdainful of
    Government''--I thought, what's new? [Laughter] But they were also, as
    Professor Bailyn said at the end of his remarks, at their best moments
    profoundly idealistic and always, always appropriately suspicious of
    untrammeled power in the hands of anyone in the Government.
        They were very wise about human nature, our Founders. They
    understood that there was light and dark in human nature. They
    understood that we are all imperfect, but society is, nonetheless,
    improvable. And in some ways, I think their most important charge to us
    was to always be about the business of forming a more perfect Union. As
    I said in my State of the Union Address, they understood it would never
    be perfect but that we always had to try to make it more perfect. And
    that is what they always tried to do, and when they left the scene, they
    instructed us to follow suit. And we've been at it ever since.
        We have a lot of questions that we have to face about the new
    millennium: We're more diverse than ever before; can we really be one
    America? How do we have a Government that is flexible enough and strong
    enough to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own
    lives and still avoid the abuses that the Founders understood would
    always be there when people were too driven by power, instead of the
    larger purposes of America? How can we widen the circle of opportunity
    to include everyone in a market system that seems inherently exclusive
    in some ways?
        There are lots of other challenges facing us, but I think our
    ability to meet the challenges of the 21st century rest in no small
    measure on our understanding of the constant values and insights with
    which we began. By honoring the past, we know there were forebears there
    who were always imagining the future. By imagining the future, we must
    do so with the hope that all of our successes will honor our past, for
    it is there, in the depth of our values and the genius of our system,
    that we began the long journey that has brought us to this day and that
    I am convinced will take us to better days ahead.
        Thank you again, Professor Bailyn. And
    now I'd like to turn the discussion over to the Director of the White
    House Millennium Council, Ellen Lovell, and we
    will begin with the questions.

    [At this point, the question-and-answer portion of the program
    proceeded.]

        The President. I'll just give you a couple of examples. I agree with
    you on this. I do think that we're very patriotic if patriotism means
    loving country and caring about its future more than you care about your
    immediate self-interest. I think we're still capable of that. And I
    could give you two or three examples.
        I think the enormous response we've had to the idea that we have to
    save the Social Security system for the 21st century before we go around
    spending this first surplus we've had in 30 years on tax cuts or
    spending programs is an example of patriotism. I think the enormous
    reservoir of interest we've had in this whole issue of climate change
    and how we can preserve the environment for 21st century America is an
    example of patriotism, because selfishness is just going ahead and
    gobbling up whatever was here before us. I think all these young people
    all over America that are responding to the call to serve in their
    communities is an example of patriotism.

    [[Page 212]]

         So I think--why I am so glad you're here--I think that it's not
    because we're not patriotic, but I think a lot of the basic patriotic
    elements of America--that is, the things that make us go--we do tend to
    take for granted, which is why I think it's so important that we take
    the occasion of entering a new millennium and a new century to think
    about the basic things again, so we'll be more sensitive to them. Why do
    we have a Bill of Rights? Why do we have a Government with certain
    powers to unify us as well as certain limits so that it can't abuse us?
    What does all this mean?
        I think that we've been around so long now, and Americans get up
    every day just expecting the country to work, and so we tend to take for
    granted what's really best about our country. And I think that can be
    bad. But I do think that the country is fully capable of patriotic
    action, if patriotism means sacrificing today for something greater
    tomorrow.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. I was just going to say, following up on that, I
    think you can look at basically all the big turning points of American
    history, all of them, and say that we survived and sort of went on to a
    higher level of achievement because two things happened: one, we
    reaffirmed the Union in new circumstances instead of letting it become
    weaker and divided, obviously, in the Civil War; and secondly, we
    expanded the meaning of liberty in a new and different time but in a
    logical way.
        And I think if you go back throughout the entire history of the
    country and you look at every major turning point in history, it was a
    triumph for the idea of union and for the idea of liberty. And I hope
    that that will always be the case. But I believe that to be true.
        I also--we had a cyberspace question here about, should we learn
    anything from 1900? It may just be pure accident, but it's interesting
    that in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was elected, when the century
    changed, we were essentially--we began the movement from being
    essentially a colonial society to a continental one. In 1900, when
    William McKinley was reelected and Theodore Roosevelt soon thereafter
    became President when Mr. McKinley was killed, we began to come to terms
    fully with the implications of the industrial revolution on our society.
    And in 2000, we will be still about the business of fully coming to
    terms for the implication of the technology and information revolution
    in our society.
        So I think there--you might be able to go back and see how people
    were dealing with it, what principles were there, whether they are
    relevant to today, and it might also be interesting to see what some of
    the predictions were in 1900 that turned out right and what turned out
    wrong, as a way of adding a grain of salt to whatever all the rest of us
    are going to be saying in 3 years. [Laughter]

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. First of all, let me say to all of those who have
    followed us in other sites, thank you for joining us. Technology really
    has turned out to be a wonderful thing. We had 4,000 hits on our website
    after the State of the Union. So Americans really are tuning in in
    positive ways on the Internet.
        Professor Bailyn, thank you for reminding
    us of the things that are profoundly, essentially American about our
    Nation, about our past, and, therefore, critical to our future.
        I want to thank Hillary again and
    Ellen Lovell for conceiving of this idea and
    executing it. I want to welcome you all to leave Abigail Adams' washroom
    here--[laughter]--and go down to the State Dining Room where we'll all
    be able to visit for a few moments now, and ask everyone to tune in when
    in about 3 weeks we have the next one of these.
        Thank you very much, and good evening.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:45 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Bernard Bailyn, professor emeritus
    of Harvard University, who gave the first lecture in the Millennium
    series, entitled ``The Living Past--Commitments for the Future.'' This
    lecture was the first Internet cybercast originating from the White
    House.