REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON AT UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME SOUTH BEND, IN SEPTEMBER 11, 1992 Thank you very much. I know that-- Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we know that in this room at least our supporters can win the cheering contest. I would hope that in this great university we could also prevail in the civility contest. I hope if my opponent or his running mate shows up at this great university during this campaign that you will go there and quietly express your support for me, but I will hope you will let them speak and have their say. I want to say a special word of thanks to all those who have come here to be with me today, to Governor and Mrs. Bayh, who are good friends of Hillary's and mine; to Mayor Flynn. Father Malloy was entire too modest. He did not tell you that he and Mayor Flynn were great college basketball players together. Mayor Flynn played at Providence, another good Catholic university. And Mayor Flynn is still a great athlete. Al Gore went out jogging with him the other day and he called me out of breath saying that the mayor had made him run for 95 minutes in the city of Boston. I want to thank Mayor Kernan and Congressman Roemer for being here. I also want to note the presence in the audience of Congresswoman Jill Long and Congressman Jim Jontz. They are both here. You have so many young people in politics here that it makes me feel like I am clearly in the tradition of Cicero, who said that of one thing he was certain--old age begins at 46. I want to thank my good friend, Senator Wofford for coming and all the others who are here. And I want to thank Father Malloy and the Notre Dame family for giving me the opportunity to come here to help Notre Dame celebrate its 150th birthday. I know it's traditional for presidential candidates to stand up and tell you that they sprang from humble beginnings, even if they were born in log cabins they built themselves. But today I would like to turn that around, for Notre Dame literally sprang from humble beginnings, from a log cabin 150 years ago when Father Edward Soren took over a log cabin on the snow covered lake shore and dared to call it a university. He came from France but it must have been something out of the American ground that gave him the inspiration to dream dreams so that thousands upon thousands of young people could share his vision. Out of the vision came on of the greatest universities of this nation, in service to its students, to country and to God. I'm especially proud to be here with those of you who participate in the center for the homeless, those who have participated in the alumni service projects, those who have participated in the center for social concerns. Service is truly a way of life here at Notre Dame. I'm proud to be here because of the national leadership exhibited by the Notre Dame family. Your former president, Father Hesberg, served with Hillary, my wife, on the Grant Commissions--Grant Foundations Commission--on the American family, work and citizenship. And they dealt with issues which have deeply concerned all of us for many years. Father Hesberg and Hillary and the other commissioners issued a highly acclaimed report, entitled, ``Youth in America's Future--the Forgotten Half,'' which I believe detailed for the first time the sharp decline in earnings among young people with no education after high school and laid out a practical agenda to offer them hope, an agenda which is now deeply embedded in my presidential campaign. A former Notre Dame law professor, Harris Wofford, here on this platform is now a United States senator from Pennsylvania. In the best tradition of Catholic social responsibility, he is leading the fight for health care for all Americans, worked for those without it, and national service for young people. Your football coach, Lou Holtz, spent a lot of years at Arkansas before he came here. I want to tell you a story about that. In his first season he took our team to the Orange Bowl against what was then the number one ranked team in America. But shortly before the game, he suspended three of the team's leading offensive players for serious misconduct. He was attacked and pilloried in the press. He was even sued. And as a young attorney general, it became my duty to defend him. Against overwhelming odds, Arkansas won the football game, but more important, Lou Holtz taught our state that high standards and values come before victory on the playing field. I'm also proud to be here because I have personally benefitted from Catholic education and from state's tradition of religious tolerance. In 1928 Governor Al Smith of New York, the first Catholic to be nominated for president, picked as his running mate Senator Joe T. Robinson from Arkansas. They lost the election to Herbert Hoover and in part, to anti-Catholic prejudice. But they carried my home state. In 1960, John Kennedy was the first Catholic to be elected president. And many Americans, especially in my part of the country said that no Catholic should be elected president because of their views. But John Kennedy carried Arkansas. If elected, I will be the first president to graduate from a Catholic college, Georgetown University. And long before that, I learned a lot about learning life in the second and third grades at St. John's School in Hot Springs, Arkansas. On a hot summer afternoon, 29 summers ago, I met President Kennedy in the Rose Garden of the White House as a 16 year old delegate to America Legion Boy's Nation. That afternoon turned me toward public service. After President Kennedy was killed, another Southerner, Lyndon Johnson, succeeded to the presidency with the promise to enact John Kennedy's program to get America moving again, and to bring America together. Because I wanted to be in public service, watch the Great Society unfold, and get a first class education, I enrolled in Georgetown University, the nation's oldest Jesuit college. I wondered when I went there whether I would be out of place, a Southern Baptist who had rarely been far from home. Thankfully, both the students and the faculty there held to the scriptural commandment to befriend the stranger in their midst. And together, we found much common ground that Baptists and Catholics could walk together. And in the end, I felt completely at home in the Catholic tradition of Georgetown. I was then, and I remain today, deeply drawn to the Catholic social mission, to the idea that, as President Kennedy said, here on earth God's work must truly be our own. I have seen it in the work that Catholic politicians like Mayor Flynn of Boston, and Senator Wofford, whom I admire, have done. I love the Catholic understanding of history and tradition, and how they shape us in our lives. And I love all the vigorous arguments. How I love those arguments. I know that all of you here at Notre Dame will take from this wonderful place those same blessings, good friends, great and caring teachers, a strong sense of your place in history and your mission in the world, and a devotion to a lifetime of learning through honest debates and open, inquiring minds. Both Baptists and Catholics in different ways are rooted in the spiritual richness of America's working people--people who know the pain of poverty and the bite of discrimination, people for whom life is a daily struggle in which they must sweat and sacrifice for themselves and their families, for whom life is made worthwhile not only through hard work and self-reliance but through opening their hearts to God and their hands to their neighbors. Each of our faiths teaches that nobody makes it alone. Ben Franklin once said, we'll hang together or assuredly we'll hang separately. That is the heart of the Judeo-Christian understanding of what it means to be a member of the human society. Rabbi Hillel said 2,000 years ago, if I am not for myself, who will be for me. If I am only for myself, who am I? Today America has wandered far from the lessons of our faiths and our history. Most people are working harder for less money. We are becoming a nation of greater poverty and much, much greater economic inequality. And that is straining the ties that bind us. Today I want to talk about the America I see and seek, but most of all, about the values behind that vision of America. I want an America that values the freedom and the dignity of the individual. All of us must respect the reflection of God's image in every man and woman and so we must value their freedom, not just their political freedom, but their freedom of conscience in matters of family and philosophy and faith. I am grateful that I was born in a country where my faith can be powerful because it is a voluntary offering of a free and joyous spirit. As that great American Baptist, Roger Williams, understood so well, without the freedom to say no, the word ``yes'' is meaningless. Here in our country more people believe in God, more people go to church or temples and more people put religion at the center of their lives than in any other advanced society on Earth. And that is a tribute to the genius and the courage of the American experiment that our government can be the protector of the freedom of every faith because it is the exclusive property of none. That is the promise of the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of religion and separation of church and state, guarantees that my southern Baptist church traditionally has supported strongly. Our freedom of conscience depends upon mutual respect. Each of us must never forget that as John Kennedy reminded the Baptist ministers in Houston in 1960, when intolerance is turned loose, and I quote, ``today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you.'' Until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped, President Kennedy was right. To preserve our social fabric, we must always appreciate the wonderful diversity of the American tapestry. That is why like so many Americans I have been appalled to hear the voices of intolerance raised in recent weeks--voices that have proclaimed that some families aren't real families, that some Americans aren't-- That some Americans aren't real Americans, and one even said that what this country needs is a quote, ``religious war.'' Well, America does not need a religious war. It needs a reaffirmation of the values that for most of us are rooted in our religious faith. Like most Americans, I go to church on Sunday, and until I lost my voice early in this campaign, I sang in my choir. My faith is a source of pride to me, but far, far more important, it is a source of humility, because it teaches that none of us is a stranger to sin and to weakness. It is a source of hope because it teaches that each of us is capable of redemption. And it is a source of challenge because it teaches that we must all strive to live according to our beliefs. We all have the right to wear our religion on our sleeves but we should also hold it in our hearts and live it in our lives. And if we are to truly practice what we preach, then Americans of every faith and viewpoint should look for ways to come together to promote the common good. That requires a much greater respect for honest diversity than we are hearing today. It wasn't so long ago that some American voices suggested that Catholics weren't real Americans and invited the equivalent of religious wars against them. As Maurio Cuomo said in his brilliant speech here at Notre Dame in 1984, ``I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as Jew, a Protestant or a non-believer, or anything else you choose.'' We know Governor Cuomo said that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might someday force theirs on us. This freedom is the fundamental strength in our unique experiment in government. I want an America with those convictions to have a renewed sense of community, an America that is coming together, not coming apart. I want to bring back the American spirit that says we're all in this together, and we're going to rise or fall together. It is that spirit that built America from the barn raisings on the old frontier to the immigrant mutual aid societies in the great society, to the churches that have helped generations of African Americans make a way out of no way. It is a spirit that draws upon our Judeo-Christian tradition. Everything in the Old Testament concerns not isolated individuals, but a people, a community. The books of law govern them. The books of history recounted their wanderings, their troubles and their triumphs. And the prophets are the great poetic voice that recalled them again and again to the meaning of the people of God. In the Christian tradition, that emphasis on community continues, since the Acts, the gospels and the epistles all come from early Christian communities, and recount to us their problems, their failures, their strengths, but, above all, their unity. Echoing down the ages is the simple but powerful truth that no grace of God was ever given me for me alone. To the terrible question of Cain --am I my brother's keeper?-- the only possible answer for us is God's thunderous yes. As I've traveled across this country, I've spoken with people whose daily experience testifies that a new sense of community is not just a moral imperative, but a practical necessity. People whose lives have been broken, even though they are doing the best that they can. And these people live everywhere. Crime and drugs are hitting our suburbs as well as our cities. Layoffs are hitting middle managers as well as assembly workers, and corporate bottom lines are suffering because our children's test scores are declining. We are learning anew the wisdom of Martin Luther King who wrote in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, ``We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' When I think of how I want to help change America during the next four years, I want, most of all, to restore the link between rights and responsibilities, between opportunities and obligations. The social contract that defines what we owe to one another, to our communities and to our country, as well as what we are entitled to for ourselves. The American community should speak in a clear and certain voice that some things are wrong. On any day, at any time, in any place violence is wrong, bigotry is wrong, abandoning children is wrong. But our religious traditions teach of more than thou-shalt-nots. In our role as citizens, we should not see ourselves only as our brothers' and sisters' keepers, but also as our brothers' and sisters' helpers. If we truly believe, as almost everyone says, no matter what they believe on certain issues, that children are God's most precious creation, then surely we owe every child born in the United States the opportunity to make the most of his or her God-given potential. I want an America that offers every child a healthy start in life, decent schooling, a chance to go to college or job training worthy of the name. Not only because that's essential for our common economic success, but because providing opportunities is how we fulfill our obligations to each other and the moral principles we honor. Any community worthy of the name would do more than just tell its young people to say no to crime and drugs. It would give them something to say yes to. The opportunity for education and jobs and the sense of connectedness to society. Yes, we must insist that parents do right by their children, and that young people do right by their communities. But our American community must also do right by them, by offering them the opportunities that support families and children to do a good job with the lives they have. We must move beyond the false choice between individual and social responsibility, because now more than ever we need both. If I could select a watchword for America, it would be the title of the recent pastoral letter of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, ``Putting Children and Families First.'' In the letter they offer the counsel of common sense and common decency, and I quote: no government can love a child, and no policy can substitute for a family's care. But government can either support or undermine families. There has been an unfortunate, unnecessary and unreal polarization and discussions in how best to help families. The undeniable fact, the letter says, is that our children's future is shaped both by the values of their parents and the policies of our nation. I want an America that does more than talk about family values. I want an America that values families. I want an America that values families by recognizing that parents have the right to take time off from their jobs when a baby's born or someone's sick. An America that values families by freeing fathers and mothers from the fear that they won't be able to take a sick child to the doctor. An America that values families by helping every parent enjoy the dignity of a job that puts bread on the table, buys shoes for the children and holds the household together in mutual support. An America that honors and rewards work and family not just in words but in deeds. I want to see us share the values expressed in the bishop's pastoral letter on the economy, that every institution and every economic decision in our society must be judged by whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the person. And for everyone who can work, human dignity is first and foremost the opportunity and the obligation to support oneself and to contribute to society. When I talk about training workers today for jobs of tomorrow, when I talk about helping people move from welfare rolls to payrolls, when I talk about rebuilding America, I'm not just talking about economic policies. I'm talking about our moral obligation to help every one of our brothers and sisters enjoy the dignity of useful and productive working lives. And if there is a dignity in all work, there must be dignity for every worker. We've got to make sure that no one who works a full week and who has children at home is condemned to a life of poverty. We've got to make sure that our families are assured a real family wage. If people work and have children, surely we should lift them above the poverty line. I want to lead an America that fulfills its obligations to the future by upholding the traditional value of stewardship over the Earth. When I was growing up, we were taught that soils and streams were not ours to waste, but a gift from God that simply hold in trust for generations yet to be born. And I selected Al Gore for vice president for many reasons, but one was his understanding of this. His understanding of the obligations of this stewardship stated so eloquently in his book, ``Earth in the Balance.'' We must be our planet's caretaker. Finally, I want an America where service is a way of life, as it is here at Notre Dame. I want Americans to learn in their own way the lesson that you've learned from Catholic social teaching, that our individual rights flow from our essential dignity as creatures of God, but that each of us reaches our fullness as human beings by being of service to our fellow men and women. Any of us who have traveled this land have seen these teachings embodied in Catholic social programs. I think of schools where young people are called not only to academic achievement but to volunteer work in hospitals and nursing homes, tutoring programs and homeless shelters, as a fundamental component of education. I have in mind parishes where family values are not simply evoked by actively guided and supported, where young people are offered preparation for opportunities for adoption and sensitive counsel on how best to fulfill their parental duties as their children's first teachers. And I see the work of Catholic relief services, the Campaign for Human Development, the National Catholic Rural (inaudible) conference and so many other agencies, all deeply rooted in community service. Talking about service, here at Notre Dame is the classic case of preaching to the choir. Your center for the homeless, your alumni summer service projects, your Center for Social Concerns--shining examples of the spirit of service that I want to see in every college and every high school and every community all across America. I want an America where every young person and every not so young person understands what Marian Wright Edelman, the president of the Children's Defense Fund tries to teach us when she says, service is the rent we pay for living. Throughout this campaign I've talked about my plan to open the doors of college to every American. To offer every person in this country the opportunity to borrow the money to go to college and then require them to pay it back either as a small percentage of their paychecks after they go to work or even better, by going back home and serving their communities. And frankly, I'd much rather see everyone whether they're rich or poor or middle class pay back that debt by going home and working for two years in a Peace Corps here in America, to rebuild America. Just think of it. Think of it. Millions of energetic young men and women serving their country by teaching the children, policing the streets, caring for the sick, working with the elderly or people with disabilities, building homes for the homeless, helping children to stay off drugs and out of gangs--giving us all a new sense of hope and real limitless possibilities. I've offered this plan to help more young people go to college but I've also offered it because I want America to send a message that our society values and honors service to community, just as Harry Truman's GI bill honored the service of my father's generation, who fought and won World War II, just as the Peace Corps, which President Kennedy created with the help of your former president, Father Hesberg and Senator Wofford, sent that message to my generation. Just as millions of Americans from all backgrounds and every walk of life are waiting for a summons to service and to citizenship, not just for young people that are going on to college but for young people in our high schools and people of all ages who want to do something for their communities and for their country. And I would just give you two examples of the kind of thing that I hope will become a hallmark of America in the next few years. Recently I took a trip to Florida which was heartbreaking and heart lifting. I went down to Florida City after the hurricane to a predominantly African American community that was almost wiped out. And as I walked down the street with the mayor we came across a man who came all the way from Michigan with two of his friends with a truckload of food and supplies for the folks in Florida. The gentlemen was a genuine American ethnic--burly and muscular and heavy set and so proud of himself he could split. And he was standing there next to an African-American woman who's home had been devastated by the storm. She looked at him and he looked at her and she said, you know, it was nearly worth losing my home to find out how well we can work together, but it's too bad it took a hurricane to prove it. And let me tell you one other story. Hillary and I and the Gores were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the Quaker Oats factory having a big rally. And I was working my way through the crowd and I noticed there was a young white woman there holding an African-American child. And I went up to the lady and I looked at this beautiful little girl, who came out an got in my arms and I was holding her, and I said, who's baby is this. And she said, that's my baby. And my baby has AIDS. And I said, where did you find this child. And she said, I adopted this child in another state. She said, you know, Governor, I respect this debate that's going on in our country about life, but how I wish we would all reach out and try to help the children who are living. We Americans are brilliant at doing right by each other at a time of crisis. All across this country, however, we must know we are in a quieter crisis of a fraying society and a declining economy, of an educational system unequal to the task of global competition, of an environment slowly coming apart at critical places. But most of all, a crisis of community, a spiritual crisis that calls upon each of us to remember and to act upon our obligations to one another. The purpose of community, the purpose of our government, the purpose of our leaders should be to call us to pursue common values and common good, not simply in the moment of extreme crisis but every day in our lives, starting right now, today. That is the leadership I seek to offer America, and that is the America I hope to be able to lead. Thank you very much.