Remarks and a question-and-answer session with students at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 11, 1995

September 5, 1995

The President. Good morning. Is this the first day of school?

Students. Yes.

The President. 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 Precedent--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 under their will--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.