Remarks at the Pennsylvania State University Graduate School Commencement in State College, Pennsylvania

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 20, 1996

But this time also presents great challenges, people whose lives are uprooted but not improved and cherished values strained by the pace and the scope of change. I'd like to talk about that a little today.

When I was growing up, Americans could pretty much walk the streets of any city without fear of being hurt by violent crime. Having children out of wedlock was rare and a source of shame. Welfare was a temporary weigh station for widows and their orphans. It was far from a perfect time, the forties and fifties and early sixties. Women and minorities didn't have the opportunities they have today. But in neighborhoods all across America, people knew it when you were born, cared about you while you lived, and missed you when you died.

For too many young people growing up today, that world exists only in black and white reruns on television. In our toughest neighborhoods and our meanest streets, we've seen a stunning and simultaneous breakdown of community, family, and work, the heart and soul of a civilized society. We've seen a buildup of crime and gangs and drugs, as young people turn to things that will destroy them, ultimately, in part because they are raising themselves without enough to say yes to.

We've seen so much of this now we've almost become numb to it. A lot of us may even be resigned to it. But I want to ask you to think today about what you want America to look like in the 21st century, and I want you to say to yourself, "I refuse to accept this as a normal and unavoidable and irreversible condition. I believe we can mend our social fabric. We've done it before, and we have to do it today."

If we're moving into an era in which we will be judged and our success will be determined by how well we use our minds, we must first be able to function as orderly, law-abiding, decent human beings. We have to, in short, not only meet the changes of the day but reaffirm our enduring values.

In this, to be sure, our Government still has a role to play. But it's not the same role that Government had to play in the beginning of the 20th century because the problems are different. The world of today has moved away from big, centralized bureaucracies and top-down solutions, so has your Federal Government. Indeed, there are 240,000 fewer people working for the United States Government today than there were the day I became President of this great country.

But we still need a Government that is strong enough to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives, to enable them to seize opportunities when they are responsible. That's why I have fought so hard for things like the student loan programs, the Pell grant programs, the scholarship programs, the research programs, because we cannot, on the one hand, tell the American people, go out and be responsible, and on the other hand, jerk the rug out from under them. We have to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives.

And whenever we fight for a strong economy or a clean environment or safe streets or investment in research and technology or give a child a chance with the Head Start program, we are doing nothing more or less than giving people an environment in which they still have to make the most of their own lives.