Bill Clinton: “No word about standards, no word about accountability, no word about empowerment of teachers and principals and parents…”

“No word about standards, no word about accountability, no word about empowerment of teachers and principals and parents, no word about teaching our children to read or hooking them up to the Internet or opening the doors to college for all. This is not about party. This is about people; this is about the future of America. And I leave you with this thought. Thomas Jefferson said--and if you go to the Jefferson Memorial you see it inscribed there--``I tremble for my Nation, to think that God is just when I consider slavery.'' We spent an enormous amount of our blood and time and effort getting over the racial discrimination that was at the core of our creation. We fought a Civil War to keep the country together. We went through a civil rights revolution to live up to the meaning of the Constitution. We had to amend the Constitution to do it. And we're still struggling with it. But for the last 100 years--starting about 100 years ago, we have become increasingly a nation of greater racial and ethnic and religious diversity, so that now, in northern Virginia alone, there are more people from more countries, with more native languages and more different religions, than any of our Founders ever could have imagined. That means, however, that we have both the greatest challenge the modern world is facing today in our borders and the most fabulous opportunity. Consider how much of your time I spend as President dealing with other people around the world who simply cannot get along because of their religious, their racial, their ethnic, or their tribal differences. Consider how many people there are in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Burundi and Rwanda, in Bosnia, the bloodiest battleground of Europe since World War II, and countless other places who draw all their strength in life by saying, ``Well, whatever's wrong with me, thank God I'm not them,'' who get up every day and think, ``My life has meaning because there's somebody who's different from me I can hate.'' And what has it led to in Bosnia? People killing other people's children. What has it led to in the Middle East, the home of the three great monotheistic religions in the world? On this Sunday, I called the leaders of the talks now going on in the Middle East and pleaded with them again to resolve their differences, to preserve what is a holy land for so many of us so that their children can grow up in peace and dignity and honor. America's soldiers went to Rwanda and to Somalia to save hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who should have been able to get along. America's soldiers are today in Bosnia, saving the lives of people who should have been able to get along. On the other hand, if you look at how small the world is getting, and if you look at our base, our economic base, our resources, our capacity to produce, our educational system, our connections with the rest of the world, our diversity is a miracle of opportunity as we stand on the threshold of the 21st century. And so I say again, as important as all those specific policies are, it's also important that we make up our mind that we're going to build that bridge to the 21st century together, we're going to walk across it together, we're going to say to each other, ``If you believe in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, if you're willing to show up tomorrow and do your job or go to school and do what you're supposed to do, we don't need to know anything else about you. You're part of our America. We're going forward with you. We're going forward with you.'' So I ask you to decide. This election is not very far away. Most people in Virginia have been voting against members of my party for President for over three decades now. And I know how hard it is to break a habit. [Laughter] But one of the things we all teach our kids is that some habits have to be broken. I want you to go out from this place and spend the next 9 days and tell your fellow Virginians they did a great thing for America when they and their native sons led us into the 19th century 200 years ago. And Virginia can help lead America into the 21st century 9 days from now. Thank you, and God bless you.”