Bill Clinton: “Well, that's good. I mean, I think it's good. You might not think it's so good. I think it's great. I want to take a…”

“Well, that's good. I mean, I think it's good. You might not think it's so good. I think it's great. I want to take a little time today to speak with you. I know you've been briefed a little bit about what I want to talk about, but I want to speak just for a few minutes. And then I'd like to answer questions or hear from you. I think it's very important--you're in this school named for Abraham Lincoln, who most of us believe was our greatest President--it's very important that at your age you understand some things about the history of our country and that you understand what the time you're living in is all about. In every time in history there are a few basic things that are really, really important, and if you want to make the most of your life you have to know what those basic important things are. So I thought what I would do today is just take a few minutes and talk about three or four of those times, bring us up to date now, and tell you what I think is most important about this time, and then let you say whatever you want to say or ask whatever questions you'd like to ask. When Abraham Lincoln was President, as you know, we had the great Civil War. And we had only been a nation for less than 100 years. We were still a relatively small country in terms of population, and we were famous for being a democracy in a world where most countries were not democracies. Most people did not get to vote for or against people at election time and to pick their own leaders. And the Civil War was really about two things: First of all, it was about whether the country would stay together as one country or split between North and South and, secondly, about whether we would continue to have slavery, even though our Constitution said that all people were created equal and that people were equal in the eyes of God. So because the Civil War came out the way it did, we stayed one country and we abolished slavery and we began the long and unending task of trying to live in a nation that didn't discriminate against people based on their race. That was a very, very important thing. And because those two things happened, we then became a very powerful economic country. And the country became more and more industrialized so that by the beginning of this century that we're about to end, the beginning of the 20th century, we'd become quite a powerful economic country with quite a large industrial base. Then World War I broke out, and we became involved in a war in another continent for the first time ever. And we tried to help our friends in Europe defeat the attempts of the Germans to take over all of Europe and to establish an empire and make people live against their own will. After World War I, because our country had never been--we'd never been involved much with other countries before. We didn't much want to be involved in other countries. When George Washington, our first President, left office, he said we should be very careful about getting too involved with other nations and their affairs. So the American people, after World War I, which was over in 1918, went back to their own business and basically withdrew from the world. Unfortunately, they couldn't withdraw from the world because by then, our economic well-being was caught up with the economic well-being of other people in other parts of the world. And there was a Great Depression in the 1920's, not only in this country but throughout the world, that led directly to the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany, whom I'm sure you've all read about, and the Nazi power there, and led to the start of World War II. I have just come from Hawaii, where we ended over a year's worth of celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, which ended in 1945, the year before I was born. World War II was about defeating Hitler, who wanted to establish an empire, along with the Italian dictator, all over Europe and in Russia. And the Japanese empire, they wanted to control everything in the Pacific--nondemocratic and running other countries. When they were defeated, our country then was the most powerful country in the world. The year I was born, 40 percent of all the wealth in the world was generated in America with only 6 percent of the people in the world, because all the other big countries had been devastated by the war. So then for the first time ever, really, in our whole history in 1945, America was forced to lead the rest of the world and to be involved in the rest of the world. And we had two reasons for doing so. One is we had to build an economic system that would avoid having another Great Depression, that would enable everybody to make a living and work hard and raise their children and have a good life in our country and in other countries. The second was that as soon as the war was over, World War II was over, the Soviet Union presented a whole new threat, what was known as the cold war. And the cold war basically involved the United States and its allies, basically Britain and France and the other democracies and now Japan and Germany, standing against the expansion of communism which then dominated the Soviet Union, most of Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea, ultimately, and then some other smaller countries around the world and also involved our being divided because we had nuclear weapons and they did, too. And we knew that if either side exploded the nuclear weapons it could lead to a war that would end the human race because the bombs had the power to kill so many people. But from the end of World War II in 1945 until just a few years ago, we had this cold war until communism failed, the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia became an independent country and a democracy and all these other countries that had been governed by communism now have different forms of government, most of them are democracies in one way or another. China is still a nondemocratic country, but essentially the cold war ended when the Soviet Union collapsed. And so for 4 or 5 years, we've been moving into a new world in which we're reducing the number of nuclear weapons, so that by the time you are grown and you have your own children, I hope no one will be afraid of the prospect of two countries going to war with each other and killing millions and millions and millions of people with nuclear weapons. But we also have a new economy now where, for example, all the agricultural products sold in this valley depend in no small measure on what happens in the world economy. Can they export these products? Can they be competitive? Are they going to be facing imports from other countries? So as you look to the future, I hope--if we do our job right, people my age, from the President on down--I hope you won't have to worry about a world in which you and your families could be destroyed by nuclear warfare. I hope you will never again have to face the prospect of dictatorships controlling hundreds of millions of people with aggressive attitudes that might force you to go into war. So as you look ahead into the 21st century, I hope that most of what you will be concerned about is a competition not based on bombs or guns but based on our minds and our ability to work. And I hope that you will be living in a country that will be the most successful country in the world, because we will find a way, without the pressure of war, to bring us together, to all get along together in spite of all of our differences. So if you look ahead from where we are now to, let's say, when you are in your early twenties, I think the world will have two great challenges. One is the challenge presented by the global economy and the technology and information revolution: How can all Americans who are willing to work hard make a good living, get a good job, establish a family, and raise their own children? It's a big problem today. Some people are doing well, but other people are working hard, and they aren't doing very well. The second is, how are we all going to get along in this world where we're of so many different races and religions and we have so many different opinions on everything. How can we get along? How can we find common ground and work together? I'm sure you see on the news at night the problems in Bosnia or you see what happened in Rwanda or Burundi in Africa where people of different tribes or ethnic groups or religious groups--they don't threaten you in the sense that nobody is threatening to drop a bomb on you, but they're killing each other rapidly. And even in this country there is a lot of tension still among people with different or religious convictions or ethnic backgrounds. So I think the two big things you'll have to deal with are how are you going to do well, you and all the people of your generation? How are you going to do well in the global economy? How are we going to guarantee that the American dream, which is that if you work hard and obey the law and do what you're supposed to do, will give you the opportunity to live up to your own dreams? And the second thing is, how are we going to deal with a world in which, while there are two great powers threatening to bomb each other out of existence, there are a whole lot of people who basically think that the differences between people are more important than what we have in common, and they're willing to fight and kill and die for that? When you see a bus blown up in Israel because nobody wants peace in the Middle East--because some people don't want peace in the Middle East--that's an example of that. And that's what I--those are the two great challenges I think you will face. There's only one you can do anything about right now, and that is your own future, how you're going to do well in this global economy. And there's one thing you need to know. In the world in which we're living, in the world toward which you're moving, education is more important today than ever before. Fifteen years ago, just for example, a high school graduate made about 40 percent less than a college graduate in their first year of work. Today the difference is 80 percent. The gap has doubled, because in a global economy, based on information and technology, education really matters. I come from a farming State that's not the same kind of agriculture you have here in the valley, but even the farmers I know, most of them now bring in their crops based on their ability to use sophisticated computer software, and I'm sure it's the same here. So while education has always been an important part of the American dream, today it is an essential part of your future, because if you look at people your parents' and your grandparents' age, for the first time in the last 15 years, for the first time, our middle class in America has basically been splitting apart between people who are doing pretty well in this new economy and people who aren't doing so well, good people who are working harder but never getting a raise and don't have a stable income. And almost exclusively--not entirely, but almost entirely--the issue is education. People that have higher levels of education are doing pretty well. People that don't aren't doing as well. And that's why, since I've been President, I've done everything I could not only to put more money into education but also to provide more opportunities for young people like you to go on to college or to get training after high school if you don't go to college, to give more poor little kids the chance to be in a Head Start program so they can get started to school in a good way. Because education now is more than just giving you an individual opportunity. Your whole country's future and this world's that we're living in and the one you're going to live in depends on our ability to educate our people. The other thing I would say is there is something you can do about the second problem, which is all these racial and religious and ethnic tensions that you see all over the world. The United States, of all the big countries in the world, is really the most ethnically diverse. We have--I mean, look around this room. Los Angeles County has people from over 150 different racial and ethnic groups. And if we can learn to get along, to respect each other's differences and to work together, then it means that the United States will have a huge advantage in the 21st century as other people find it impossible to bury the hatchet and to reach across their different religious and racial and ethnic lines. If we can do it, we're going to have a huge advantage. So anything you can do as a student, as a young person dealing with other young people to learn to really respect people who are different from you and understand them--it's okay to disagree with them, but to find a way to work together with them, that will really help your country. And it will also give you a better future. Anyway, that's a short history of the last 130 years of America--140 years--and where I think we are and where I think we're going. I really believe that there's a very good chance that you will live in the best period in American history, that you will live in the most exciting period in American history, that you will have more opportunities to do more things than any group of people ever has. But it depends upon our dealing with those two challenges: We've got to learn to get along with people that are different from us and work together, and we have to educate everybody. If we do that, we're going to be fine. Anybody have any questions, comments? Student. Did you always set high education goals for yourself?”