From: kko@fraser.sfu.ca (Samuel Ko)
Subject: Re: The speech
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 08:07:09 GMT

I got this from The New York Times ...

President Clinton:

My fellow citizens, today, we celebrate the mystery of American renewal.
This ceremony is held in the depth of winter. But, by the words we speak
and the faces we show the world, we force the spring. A spring reborn in
the world's oldest democracy, that brings forth the vision and courage to
reinvent America.

When our founders boldly declared America's independence to the world and
our purposes to the Almighty, they knew America, to endure, would have to
change. Not change for change's sake, but change to preserve America's
ideals -- life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Though we march to the
music of our time, our mission is timeless. Each generation must define what
it means to be an American.

On behalf of our nation, I salute my predecessor, President Bush, for his
half-century of service to America.

And I thank the millions of men and women whose steadfastness and sacrifice
triumphed over depression, fascism, and communism. Today, a generation raised
in the shadows of the cold war assumes new responsibilities in a world warmed
by the sunshine of freedom but threatened still by ancient hatreds and new
plagues.

Raised in unrivaled prosperity, we inherit an economy still the world's
strongest, but weakened by business failures, stagnant wages, increasing
inequality, and deep divisions among our own people.

When George Washington first took the oath I have just sworn to uphold, news
traveled slowly across the land on horseback and across the ocean by boat. Now,
the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneously to billions
around the world. Communications and commerce are global, investment is mobile,
technology is almost magical, and ambition for a better life is now universal.
We earn our livelihood in America today in peaceful competition with people all
across the earth. Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our
world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our
friend and not our enemy.

This new world has already enriched the lives of millions of Americans who are
able to compete and win in it. But when most people are working harder for less,
when others cannot work at all, when the cost of health care devastates families
and threatens to bankrupt our enterprises great and small, when fear of crime
robs law-abiding citizens of their freedom, and when millions of poor children
cannot even imagine the lives we are calling them to lead, we have not made
change our friend. We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps.
But we have not done so. Instead, we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded
our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence.

Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever
been a restless, questing, hopeful people, and we must bring to our task today
the vision and will of those who came before us. From our Revolution to the
Civil War, to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, our people have
always mustered the determination to construct from these crises the pillars of
our history.

Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation,
we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well my fellow Americans, this
is our time. Let us embrace it.

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own
renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is
right with America. And so today, we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and
drift, and a new season of American renewal has begun.

To renew America, we must be bold. We must do what no generation has had to do
before. We must invest more in our own people - in their jobs and their own
future - and at the same time cut our massive debt. And we must do so in a world
in which we must compete for every opportunity. It will not be easy. It will
require sacrifice. But it can be done and done fairly. Not choosing sacrifice
for its own sake, but for our own sake. We must provide for our nation the way
a family provides for its children.

Our founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no less. Anyone
who has ever watched a child's eyes wander into sleep knows what posterity is.
Posterity is the world to come. The world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom
we have borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibility. We must
do what America does best: offer more opportunity to all and demand more
responsibility from all.

It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing from our
Government or from each other. Let us take more responsibility not only for
ourselves and our families but for our communities and our country.

To renew America, we must revitalize our democracy. This beautiful capital, like
every capital since the dawn of civilization, is a place of intrigue and
calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about
who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people
whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

Americans deserve better. And in this city today, there are people who want to
do better. And so I say to you, let us resolve to reform our politics, so that
power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. Let us put
aside personal advantage so that we can feel the pain and see the promise of
America. Let us resolve to make our government a place for what Franklin
Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation, a Government for our
tomorrows, not our yesterdays. Let us give this capital back to the people to
whom it belongs.

To renew America, we must meet challenges abroad as well as at home. There is no
longer a clear division today between what is foreign and what is domestic. The
world economy, the world environment, the world AIDS crisis, the world arms race
- they affect us all.

Today, as an old order passes, the new world is more free but less stable.
Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities and new dangers. Clearly
America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make.

While America rebuilds at home, we will not shrink from the challenges, nor fail
to seize the opportunities of this new world. Together with our friends and
allies, we will work to shape change lest it engulf us. When our vital interests
are challenged, or the will and conscience of the international community
defied, we will act, with peaceful diplomacy whenever possible, with force when
necessary. The brave Americans serving our nation today in the Persian Gulf and
Somalia, and wherever else they stand are testament to our resolve.

But our greatest strength is the power of our ideas, which are still new in many
lands. Across the world, we see them embraced and we rejoice. Our hopes, our
hearts, our hands, are with those on every continent who are building democracy
and freedom. Their cause is America's cause.

The American people have summoned the change we celebrate today. You have raised
your voices in an unmistakable chorus, you have cast your votes in historic
numbers, and you have changed the face of the Congress, the Presidency, and the
political process itself. Yes, you, my fellow Americans have forced the spring.

Now, we must do the work the season demands. To that work I now turn, with all
the authority of my office. I ask the Congress to join with me. But no
President, no Congress, no government, can undertake this mission alone. My
fellow Americans, you, too, must play your part in our renewal.

I challenge a new generation of young Americans to a season of service - to act
on your idealism by helping troubled children, keeping company with those in
need, reconnecting our torn communities. There is so much to be done. Enough,
indeed, for millions of others who are still young in spirit to give of
themselves in service, too.

In serving, we recognize a simple but powerful truth: We need each other and we
must care for one another. Today, we do more than celebrate America, we
rededicate ourselves to the very idea of America: An idea born in revolution and
renewed through two centuries of challenge, an idea tempered by the knowledge
that but for fate we, the fortunate and the unfortunate, might have been each
other; an idea ennobled by the faith that our nation can summon from its myriad
diversity the deepest measure of unity, an idea infused with the conviction that
America's long heroic journey must go forever upward.

And so, my fellow Americans, as we stand at the edge of the 21st Century, let us
begin anew with energy and hope, with faith and discipline. And let us work
until our work is done. The Scripture says, "And let us not be weary in well-
doing, for in due season, we shall reap if we faint not."

From this joyful mountain top of celebration, we hear a call to service in the
valley. We have heard the trumpets. We have changed the guard. And now each in
our own way, and with God's help, we must answer the call.

Thank you, and God bless you all.





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