Remarks to the American Association of Community Colleges in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 1, 1995

Well, people like that who want to share our freedoms must know that their bitter words can have consequences and that freedom has endured in this country for more than two centuries because it was coupled with an enormous sense of responsibility on the part of the American people.

If we are to have freedom to speak, freedom to assemble, and, yes, the freedom to bear arms, we must have responsibility as well. And to those of us who do not agree with the purveyors of hatred and division, with the promoters of paranoia, I remind you that we have freedom of speech, too. And we have responsibilities, too. And some of us have not discharged our responsibilities. It is time we all stood up and spoke against that kind of reckless speech and behavior.

If they insist on being irresponsible with our common liberties, then we must be all the more responsible with our liberties. When they talk of hatred, we must stand against them. When they talk of violence, we must stand against them. When they say things that are irresponsible, that may have egregious consequences, we must call them on it. The exercise of their freedom of speech makes our silence all the more unforgivable. So exercise yours, my fellow Americans. Our country, our future, our way of life is at stake. I never want to look into the faces of another set of family members like I saw yesterday, and you can help to stop it.

Our democracy has endured a lot over these last 200 years, and we are strong enough today to sort out and work through all these angry voices. But we owe it to our children to do our part. Billy Graham got a standing ovation yesterday when he said, "The spirit of our Nation will not be defeated." I can tell by your response that that is true. But you must begin today.

The little girl who read the poem yesterday at our service said, "Remember the trust of the children. Darkness will not have its day." The trust of the children is what we are here to talk about.

This whole community college movement has made as big a contribution to the future of America as any institutional change in the United States in decades. All of you live every day with the future. You have important work to do. I ask you only to think of how different what you do is from what you have been hearing from the voices of division.

Why do community colleges work? Well, first of all, they're not encumbered by old-fashioned bureaucracies. By and large, they are highly entrepreneurial. They are highly flexible. They are really democratic - small "d" - they're open to everybody, right? In the best sense. They are open to everybody. And people work together. And when something doesn't work, they go do something else. That's what you do. You do it in a spirit of cooperation. You are remarkably unpolitical in that sense.

In other words, every experience you have - and you see people of all ages coming through your doors, walking out your doors, going on to better, more fulfilling, more satisfying lives, able to help themselves and strengthen America in the process. It is the direct antithesis of the kind of paranoia and division and hatred that we hear spewed out at us all over this country, day in and day out, by people exercising their free speech to make the rest of us miserable. And it contradicts the experience of what works in America.