Following are excerpts from President Clinton’s Jan. 20 Inaugural Address:
... Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our age 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 millions and threatens to bankrupt many of 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. ...
Our founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no less. Anyone who has 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. ...
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 much to be done--enough 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. ...
