NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/bit/listserv/govdocl/3145

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Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 00:34:48 EST
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Subject:      Pres. Clinton's Inaugural Address
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----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Following is the text of Mr. Clinton's inaugural address.  Many thanks to
EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics Library in Washington,
DC.  The OPPT Library is staffed by LABAT-ANDERSON, Inc.  Their INTERNET
address is [e-mail].



                                                  Monday, 4 January 1993

     Bill Clinton's Inaugural Address


     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 that

     America, to endure, would have to change.  Not change for change 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 of American's 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 unrivalled
     prosperity, we inherit an economy that is still the world's strongest, but
     is 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 travelled slowly across the land by 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 the 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 in their 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 hold our ideals, from whom we have
     borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibilities.
     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 all 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 capitol, like every capitol since
     the dawn of civilization, is often 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 paves our way.

     Americans deserve better, and in this city today there are people who want
     to do better, and so I say to all of you here, 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
     capitol back to the people to whom it belongs.


     To the new America we must meet challenges abroad, as well as at home.
     There is no longer a clear division 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 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 together to shape change, lest it engulf us.  When our vital
     interests are challenged, or the will and conscience of the international
     community is defied, we will act; with peaceful diplomacy whenever
     possible, with force when necessary.  The brave Americans serving our
     nation today in the Persian Gulf, in 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, you have changed the face of 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 accomplish 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 community.  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 journey 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 mountaintop of celebration we hear a call to service
     in the valley.  We have heard the trumpet, 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.