pd08my95 Digest of Other White House Announcements...

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education and prevention and treatment.
    We also understand that poverty breeds crime. That's why I worked so 
hard on the earned-income tax credit, to say that if you do work you 
shouldn't be still in poverty. We ought to reward work. The real heroes 
in this country today are people who are being pounded by this global 
economy, who are living in neighborhoods that are difficult, and still 
get up every day and go to work and raise their children the best they 
can, obey the law, pay their taxes, and try to make things work. They 
deserve economic policies and security policies that give them a chance 
to be honored for their work.
    I do want to say again, though, we have to try to look deeper at the 
cause of the violence. Ellen mentioned that I recently appointed Bonnie 
Campbell, of Iowa, to direct our Office of Violence Against Women. And 
one of her most important jobs will be simply to educate the American 
people about the scope of this problem and what should be done and how 
to root it out. But our goal must be not just to punish people who do 
this but to stop it from happening in the first place, to change the 
spirit and the culture of America.
    Yesterday--or, excuse me, late last week, I met with Eileen Adams, 
another distinguished appointee at the Justice Depart- 

[[Page 749]]

ment, who runs our Office of Victims Rights. And we honored people who 
spend all their time working with victims of crime. I met mothers who'd 
lost their children. I met a woman who had been victimized by a repeat 
sex offender who was released on parole, who molested her, poured 
gasoline over her body, set her afire, and left her to die. And this 
young girl, having literally had her body burned beyond recognition, and 
her brave mother have worked for more than a decade, after this child 
was maimed and blinded and burned almost beyond recognition, to put her 
life back together physically and spiritually. And now the mother and 
the daughter spend all their time trying to help victims of crime.
    We must address what is causing the United States to commit the 
whole range of violence that we see. And none of us can escape our 
responsibility. We have to say: What do we expect from individuals? And 
we're not going to tolerate the defense that somebody else made me do 
it. What will families have to do? What will community organizations 
have to do? What must the churches do? What must the Government do? 
Where have we been wrong? What must the media do? And what must the 
culture do, the influence centers in our culture, the entertainment 
industry, the sports industry?
    There have now been--the Vice President told me this morning before 
I left to come over here, there have now been 3,000 studies on the 
relationship between violent behavior and exposure to violence through 
entertainment in ways that desensitize people to it, and they all show 
that there is a connection.
    Now, that doesn't mean that we should have all movies and books 
without violence. This is a violent country. It's a part of real life. 
It doesn't mean they can't be exciting, but it does mean when we 
desensitize and deaden people to the reality of violence, we cannot be 
surprised when our children, who do not know right from wrong and are 
not as well developed as those of us who are older, have a desensitized 
reaction to their own conduct. So we must all say: What is our 
responsibility? We must all accept the fact that our words do have 
consequences. We must accept that.
    We must ask, without pointing the finger of blame necessarily, we 
say--do you say things or do things that either reinforce violent 
behavior, encourage violent behavior, act as if at least it doesn't 
matter to you, or numb people to what it's really like? And what could 
we do to deal with this in a comprehensive way? We don't need to make 
this a political issue. We must not make it a partisan issue. But 
neither can anybody run and hide under the sheet and say, well, I didn't 
do this, that, or the other thing; therefore, what I did do was fine.
    This horrible thing that has happened to us in Oklahoma at least 
imposes on us a responsibility to all examine the roots of violence in 
this country. We need not be more violent than other countries. We need 
not abuse our freedom so cavalierly. We need not snuff out more lives. 
But above all, if we do this, we can't be selective. We can't condemn 
one act of violence and condone another. That would be like trying to 
put out a fire by just watering one room and leaving the others to burn.
    For too long, people, I think, have taken the easy way out and 
blamed violence only on the environment in which a person grows up. 
Well, that's, doubtless, true. But if that's true, why do most people 
who grow up in horrible environments turn out to be law-abiding 
citizens? Why do some people succeed against all the odds? Other people, 
because it lets them off the hook, just want to blame the individual and 
ignore the root causes. Well, if that's true, why are some groups of 
people so much more law abiding than others and so much less violent 
than others? We've got to set aside our preconceptions and our 
ideological baggage. And I say again, we don't need partisanship here; 
we need to look at violence with new and fresh eyes.
    My administration has worked to make our country safer. It's worked 
to give more people the liberation of education. It's worked to make the 
economy stronger. And we can do more on all these fronts. But the thing 
that is driving violence in America is deeper than that, deeper than all 
these things.
    So I ask you to work on this, to work on this with me. Yes, continue 
your passion for the cause of violence against women and children. Yes, 
continue your passion for the proposition that people who only perform 
le- 

[[Page 750]]

gally under the law should not have their places of business bombed.
    But be concerned about the political violence that makes people 
believe that they can literally claim to be political prisoners when 
they murder innocent children. And be concerned about the violence that 
grows out of our total insensitivity to the welfare of all these 
children who are growing up on the meanest streets in America. Be 
concerned about the violence that may at least be legitimized by the 
cultural forces and the daily words that all of us endure and sometimes 
enjoy.
    We all have a role in this. This is a big issue. It will not be 
solved overnight. But it will be hard enough--I will tell you again--it 
will be hard enough for us to combat the forces of disintegration and 
organized evil into the 21st century if we are at our best. If we are at 
our best, it will be hard enough. If we continue to be insensitive to 
the role all the forces in our society play to the environment in which 
we operate, it may be a battle we can't win.
    I honestly believe that the years ahead of us will be the most 
exciting, most productive, most rewarding years in all of human history, 
especially for people who historically have not been able to live up to 
the fullest of their capacity. But to do that, we must--we must--root 
out this scourge of darkness within our country, and we can do it.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:02 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the 
Washington Hilton at the 10th anniversary celebration of EMILY's List. 
In his remarks, he referred to Ellen Malcolm, founder and president, 
EMILY's List, and former Texas Governor Ann Richards.


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[Page 750-751]
 
Monday, May 8, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 18
Pages 735-776
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 1995
 
Remarks to ``I Have A Future'' Program Participants

May 1, 1995

    Dr. Foster, Dr. Peters, Jason and LaShonda, the ``I Have A Future'' 
teens and parents and the national community leaders that are here. I 
have received, in this room named for Presidents Theodore and Franklin 
Roosevelt, Kings and Queens, Prime Ministers and Presidents, Senators 
and Congressmen and Governors, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, world-
famous citizens. I have never been prouder to receive people in this 
room than I am to have you here today. LaShonda and Jason have said 
everything that needs to be said about this, about Henry Foster and 
about the ``I Have A Future'' program.
    For a very long time, I have been concerned about how many of our 
young people we are losing because of teen pregnancy or drugs or 
violence or just giving up on school. This program, which combats teen 
pregnancy through abstinence and hope, which keeps people in school and 
off drugs and away from violence, is what America ought to be about. We 
have people here every day, making speeches about all this. You have 
actually done something about it. We have people here every day, rushing 
to define people that they're opposed to in little cardboard cut-out 
terms, so that it will fit in 15 or 20 seconds that shoots across the 
airways at night on the evening news.
    Now you know, because you know Dr. Foster, how easy it is to make 
something big little, something little big, something straight twisted, 
something good look wrong.
    Henry Foster has been a teacher and a doctor. He has done everything 
he could to promote life's best values. He has spent a lifetime 
addressing the problems that are now engulfing our country. If we can't 
save you kids, we can't save America. If we can't convince you that 
violence is wrong, that drugs are wrong, that teen pregnancy is wrong, 
that you've got to live for yourself and make the most of your life, we 
can't save America.
    Most folks get so cynical and skeptical, they think nothing good can 
happen. Well, here it is, something good happening, something wonderful 
happening, something that is changing lives and it is bringing people 
together, something that there is no partisan politics in, something 
that is just good, rooted in old-fashioned, good, decent American 
values.
    Everybody that looks at it has reached the same conclusion. My 
predecessor, President Bush, honored the success of this program by 
naming it one of the 1,000 Points of Light. President Bush's Secretary 
of Health and

[[Page 751]]

Human Services, Dr. Lou Sullivan, said that ``I Have A Future'' is the 
kind of program this country needs because it turns young people's lives 
around. I didn't say that, though I sure believe it. They said that.

    So I say to you, I'm glad you came up here to fight for Henry 
Foster, and I'm glad you came up here to fight against people who are 
compelled, for political reasons, to label Americans and put them in 
little boxes and turn them into something they're not.

    I'm glad you came up here to tell the Members of the Congress, ``If 
you want me to grow up to be a good citizen, if you want me to believe 
in the American way of life, then you had better honor it in the 
decisions you make.'' If we can't confirm Henry Foster to be the Surgeon 
General of the United States, what kind of person can we confirm? He 
deserves it, and America needs the kinds of thing that you have shown us 
here today.

    When you go home, you remember what I told you: In this room, Kings 
and Queens, Presidents and Prime Ministers, Senators and Congressmen and 
Governors, Nobel Prize winners, world-famous people, but you are 
carrying the future of America in your soul, in your spirit, in what you 
believe in, and in what you do. And America has a future if you have a 
future.

    Tomorrow, you show that to the Congress, and you show that to 
America, and you say, ``We're not going to let this good man be put in a 
little box for somebody's political objectives. The future of the 
children of this country is more important than that.''
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:45 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Surgeon General nominee Dr. 
Henry W. Foster, Jr.; Dr. Sheila Peters, coordinator of community 
services, and Jason Gordon and LaShonda Maryland, participants, ``I Have 
A Future'' Adolescent Health Promotion Program.


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[Page 751-752]
 
Monday, May 8, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 18
Pages 735-776
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 1995
 
Remarks on Presenting the 1994 Commander in Chief Trophy to the U.S. Air 
Force Academy Football Team

May 1, 1995

    Please be seated. I'm delighted to see all of you here: Senator 
Burns; Secretary Widnall; to our distinguished military leaders who are 
here, General Shalikashvili, General Fogelman, General Stein; members of 
the Board of Visitors of the Air Force Academy; Coach DeBerry, and the 
seniors of the Falcons football team. I want to congratulate the Air 
Force Academy on winning the Commander in Chief trophy now for the 6th 
year in a row.
    When I presented the Air Force Academy the Commander in Chief trophy 
2 years ago, I had just become President, and I didn't understand that 
the idea of a traveling trophy meant that it was supposed to go back and 
forth between Colorado and Washington--[laughter]--once a year. I now 
understand what this traveling trophy is, and I think I will be far more 
comfortable in doing my duty today.
    I was impressed with the Air Force Academy's ferocious defense. We 
could use some of your coaching up here from time to time, Coach. 
Sacking the opposing quarterback a record 48 times; two straight games 
holding your opponents to minus four yards rushing; and after years of a 
wishbone offense, which I have followed closely, you pass more--over 
1,500 yards this year. I think it's more appropriate for the Air Force 
Academy to have a big air attack. [Laughter]
    More importantly, you've won this trophy 6 years in a row, and you 
won this year because the young men who play football have embraced the 
lessons that Coach DeBerry has taught. The values of discipline, 
teamwork, and faith produce success not only on the field, but also in 
the Air Force and in life.
    I look forward to seeing all of you again on May 31st, when I will 
have the honor of

[[Page 752]]

speaking at your commencement. And I am very proud that in 30 days all 
the young men behind me will be commissioned as second lieutenants in 
the United States Air Force.
    Having said that, I am very pleased now to present the Commander in 
Chief trophy to Coach DeBerry and the Air Force Academy Falcons, and to 
invite the coach up here to make whatever remarks he'd like to make.
    Congratulations.

Note: The President spoke at 6:44 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gen. Paul Stein, USAF, 
Superintendent, U.S. Air Force Academy, and Fisher DeBerry, coach of the 
U.S. Air Force Academy Falcons.


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[Page 752]
 
Monday, May 8, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 18
Pages 735-776
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 1995
 
Message on the Observance of Cinco de Mayo, 1995

May 1, 1995

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