Remarks at Webster Groves High School in Webster Groves, Missouri

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 27, 1996

May 17, 1996

Thank you very much. Let me say, first, thank you for this very warm welcome. [Laughter] Congressman Gephardt and Mrs. Gephardt and I were talking on the way in - it may be too hot for you, but we have just been through the bitterest winter we can remember in Washington, DC, and it's very comfortable for me. I'll never complain about the heat again. We're delighted to be here.

Mayor Williams; Superintendent Gussner; your principal, Patricia Voss; the police chief, Gene Young; let me thank all of you. Let me thank Mr. Johnson and the Jazz Ensemble One for playing here. I used to play in a group like that and I liked every day of it. I want to thank Mrs. Genovese and the students who did all the banners and the signs. They're just terrific. Thank you.

I came down here with a lot of people today, but one of the staff members that I brought, someone who works for our Secretary of Labor, Bob Reich, is an alumni of Webster Groves, Catherine Jayne. She came down here with me, and I wanted to mention that, just so you'll know your influence is being felt in Washington.

And I want to say a special word of thanks to the young lady who introduced me, Jocelyn Grant. She did a good job, didn't she? Give her another hand. I know something of her activities, and I want to thank her not only for the introduction, but for being a very good model of what good citizenship and personal responsibility can mean in a school and a community.

I came here with Congressman Gephardt today to Webster Groves to talk to you about one of the greatest challenges we face as a Nation, the rising tide of violence among our young people. I'm here because this community has worked together to reduce that tide of violence, and because we have to work together as a country if we expect your future to be what it ought to be.

You will live most of your lives in the 21st century. It will be an age of unparalleled possibility: the possibility to do things for a living that are more various and more exciting than any generation of Americans has ever known; the possibility to bring this country together across the lines of race and income that divide us; the possibility to live in a world that is more peaceful and free and prosperous and secure than any the world has ever known.

But all those are just possibilities, not guarantees. If you want that kind of country for your future, you'll have to work for it. We'll have to work to make sure that every American, without regard to their station in life, has a chance to live out their dreams. We'll have to work to bridge the differences that still divide too many of our people, and make sure that we treat our diversity as a precious asset and that we come together across racial and regional and gender and income lines. And we'll have to work for a world that is more peaceful.

To achieve that, we'll have to meet a lot of challenges. The Congressman talked about one of them. We have to build stronger families. We have to build a world-class education for all of our people, which is why we've worked so hard for more affordable college loans and more scholarships and more work-study, so that every one of you gets out of here who wants to do it will have a chance to go to college and will never be deterred by the cost of a college education. We want that.

We'll have to work to build a new form of family economic security in this dynamic economy. We'll have to give people now the opportunity for an entire lifetime to get more education, to have access to affordable health care, to have a pension that they'll need for old age that they can carry around with them even if they have to change jobs. We'll have to work to achieve that.

We'll have to work to continue to grow our economy and preserve the environment. But if we don't preserve our natural environment, our clean air, our clean water, our resources, our wildlife, we'll never have the kind of future that America deserves. And I know young people of America are as committed to that as any group of our fellow citizens. We'll have to work to make the world a more peaceful place, more free of terrorism and international crime and drug running and weapons running. And we'll have to work to make sure that you have a government that does its part. But none of this will matter if we can't fulfill our first responsibility as a society, and that is to preserve lawfulness and to minimize violence in our own homes and streets and neighborhoods and communities.

You know, a lot of Americans are so numb to turning on the television news at night and seeing another report of another violent crime that they just take it for granted; they almost yawn. They say, "Well, I can miss the first 5 minutes of the news, that will be the crime part."

Now, I know that we can never fully eliminate crime from our country because we can't totally transform human nature. But I'll tell you what we can do. We can go back to the time when people go home at night and they turn on the television news and they see a serious crime, when they're appalled, surprised, disgusted, and shocked; when it is the exception and not the rule. That's the kind of America I want again.