It is the concept and the essence of citizenship that unites a pluralistic democracy. It is citizenship that makes the social contract a moral transaction, governing not only our behavior toward one another now, but toward generations past and future. We must remember that our society is more than a vast market and that individuals are more than producers, consumers, and entrepreneurs. We are a community of citizens bound by mutual commitment, not by chance and circumstance. For freedom and obligation, liberty and duty, are intertwined.
Individual responsibility is at the heart of a true democratic citizenship.
S o my dear seniors and graduates, please do not surrender to the charm of cynicism and cynics. After all, it is cynics who have tried to foist upon you the label of Generation X. Such generalizations are not new. It was Hemingway who, in 1926, borrowed a phrase from Gertrude Stein and gave the Lost Generation its name. That was followed by other facile characterizations, such as the Restive Thirties, the Conformist Forties, the Beat Generation of the fifties, the Unstable Sixties, the Me Generation of the seventies, and the Yuppies of the eighties. I ask that you refuse the title of Generation X and insist on a label that suits your highest ideals and aspirations.