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Clinton
Gore
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lisa Caputo
AUGUST 23, 1992
Joyce Kravitz
501/399-3840
REMARKS OF HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
AUGUST 23, 1992
Thank you. It is so great to be back here after only a year's
absence. I thought it would take a little longer to work out a way
to get an invitation back, but this is just wonderful for us. We
were here last year, we enjoyed the hospitality, the opportunity to
meet so many of you who made Chautauqua your summer home and others
of you who are able to come for a week or a weekend. This is the
kind of place and the tradition that I believe so well represent
what is best about America. People are coming together to share
their views, looking for what brings us together and not divides
us, and trying always to be better informed, maybe better motivated
and certainly more caring about the world around us. So first, let
me, on behalf of my husband and myself, thank Chautauqua and thank
you, President Bratton for this invitation and this opportunity to
be here.
We are also pleased to be here with the Moynihans and the
Lundines, people who represent the kind of public service that we
value, and also just delighted to have been on this bus tour with
the Gores. You know, people keep asking us, "What's it really
like?" It is so much fun to be out here in America meeting people,
talking with them, listening to them. I don't know how many of you
saw what happened to us in Youngstown yesterday but a whole bridal
party came from the wedding on the way to their reception to our
rally. And I thought that maybe they were just stopping by, but
they were wearing their full regalia, all the bridesmaids and the
groom's men, and one of them said to us, "We want to be part of
changing America," and that's what we're finding all across the
country.
You know, when Bill and I were here last year, we were here
during a week in which we talked about families. I must confess
the conversation was not so heated or so emotional as it was last
week in Houston. It was more inclined to be about, "What can we do
to help all families?" How do we understand the world we are
living in now, which has changed so dramatically in just a
generation? How do those of us who are parents navigate this
National Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 615
Little Rock. Arkansas 72203
Telephone (501) 372-1992
FAX (501) 372-2292
Paid for by the Clinton/Gore 92 Committee
world? It is harder today to be child, I think. The kinds of
challenges and temptations that confront children make the job of
parenting and grandparenting much more difficult. Tipper wrote a
book which I think sums it up pretty well, How to Raise PG Children
in an X-Rated Society, and that is pretty much what all of us are
up against.
But I think that the issues that underlie the questions being
raised in homes and churches and workplaces about families are far
more important than the kind of political rhetoric that heated up
the skies last week. What I find day after day, month after month,
is that so many American families are coming to terms with the
stresses and the challenges they face. Last year I talked about
what it was like both to be someone who is concerned about family,
committed to my own family, concerned about other people's
families, and to be a woman whom I described as being on the cusp.
What I meant by that was a woman between the generation of my
mother and the generation of my daughter. And I said last year and
I repeat today, it is a difficult journey we are on. It is hard
for both men and women to know fully how to define themselves in
this new world. But let's help one another. Let's not cast blame
and point fingers, let's reach out helping hands and help every man
and woman and boy and girl and family in America.
I also said last year and will repeat again that this argument
which seems to have consumed the other political party about
families, is presenting a false choice to America. We have to
stand up for what I thought was so well expressed in the recent
pastoral letter that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
issued, a letter they entitled, "Putting Children and Families
First.' In that letter, they said this: "No government can love a
child, and no policy can substitute for a family's care. But,
government can either support or undermine families. There has
been an unfortunate, unnecessary and unreal polarization in
discussion in how best to help families. The undeniable fact is
that our children's future is shaped both by the values of their
parents and the policies of our nation." And it is time that we
recognize that fundamental truth that yes, every family and every
parent has to assume the responsibility for the most sacred trust
they are given: the nurturing and care of the next generation.
All across this country there are families and parents
struggling to fulfill that trust against unbelievable odds. They
have no work, they have no health care, they have no housing, and
in too many cases, they have no hope. There is something for all
of us to do no matter who we might be. We each have, I believe, a
calling that we may or may not recognize but which is there for us.
For some it may the art, the voices we heard; for others, the
environment, and protecting and sustaining it; for others, the care
of our elderly and the giving of dignity to them; but for me, ever
since I was a child, it has been the care and nurturing of
children, and I believe that is for two reasons. First, because I
have a family which from the very beginning of my life said to me,
"You are a valuable and special person." And they also said to me,
"You may be a girl, but you can do whatever you choose to do.' And
I took my mother and my father's words to heart. I took their
belief in me and internalized it. And as I grew older I learned,
mostly from my church, that I have been blessed because I have been
given a family which gave me what every family should give every
child, and what every child should have the right to expect: the
kind of love and discipline and care and motivation that doesn't
say "This is what you must be, or "You are wrong," but says, "Here
is what God meant for you to be and we will give you the help we
can to develop the gifts that God gave you in your life."
What my church taught me is because I had those blessings from
that family, I owed something back. That it would not be enough if
I were successful and grew to have the kind of wonderful marriage
and love and partnership that I am blessed with, the family that I
have and cherish, the opportunity to be better off than I ever
dreamed possible -- that would not be enough. So from an early age
my church said to me, "Yes, your personal salvation is important,
but you have a scripturally ordained responsibility to reach out
and help others as well." And for me that took the shape early on
in caring about children, and doing what I could to try to give
them whatever I thought I have received from my own family that
might make their way in life a little easier, a little better. And
I started with the Children's Defense Fund in 1970, and am as proud
to stand here today as a staff member, a board member, a chair of
the board of what I believe to have been the greatest child
advocacy organization in this country that stands for the
proposition that every child deserves a chance and no child should
be left behind in a country as rich as ours.
And so, what I would ask today is what my husband, and Al, and
Tipper, and I have been asking and saying at stops all over this
great country. Let us live with the vision in our minds of what
this country can be. Let us recognize the reality around us. Let
us know that every 13 seconds a child is abused and neglected;
every 53 minutes a child dies from the effects of poverty in this
country; and, as Tipper said, every three hours a child in America
is murdered. But then let us look those horrific facts and ask
ourselves, "What can we do to try to make a difference?" Let's
start with our own families and the children closest to us, but
then reach out in a wonderful outreach of care and hope, so that in
years to come, we can have conferences here in Chautauqua in which
we talk about how we turned the tide and helped families, because
we secured their economic futures, we gave them back the dignity of
work, we changed the debilitating welfare system, we provided
health care for every person, and we gave our young people an
education that will enable them to be competitive and productive.
You know, at the end of the Cold War, this country's best
years are before us. But one of the things I learned early on,
advocating for children, sometimes representing children which have
been terribly abused and terribly neglected, I learned that a year
in the life of a two-year old is half their life. Five years in
the life of a ten-year old is half their life. We have to move
now. We have to care now. There are too many American children,
waiting, waiting, waiting and hoping that you and I will help their
family give them what I took for granted and what we should want
for every child. Thank you all very much.
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June 28,1991
As I was listening to Letty (Cottin Pegrebin) introduce me, it
ran through my mind that many of the things I have done in the last
20 or SO years in my life have been connected with trying to define
what it means to be an adult, a woman, a wife, a mother in today's
world.
I think all of us come to the idea of family with some built-in
presumptions because we all ware members of one, and BO it's probably
a bit presumptuous and perhaps a little bit foolish to stand in front
of a group such as this to talk about these matters, but we were
invited to do so, and it was a wonderful reason to come to
Chautauqua, 30 here I am.
I thought I would spent a little time talking about how I came to
these issues about family and marriage and parenting, and then share
with you some of what it means to try to have a marriage and a family
in the public eye. Then, my husband will talk
...
he'll talk about
whatever he wants to
but I think he will talk about (at least as
of 8:00 this morning) some of what we've tried to do in our state to
make conditions more friendly toward the responsibilities of
parenting and families.
You know, I was thinking, as I have, steadily, for the past several
days, about these issues that we've been discussing here this week. I
am so delighted that Chautauqua has chosen once again to focus on the
family. My husband was here three years ago in a similar series of
lectures.
It is very clear to me, and I think, to many of you here, that our
country can only be as strong as our individuals are, and our
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individuals can only be as strong and as competent as the families
from which they come are. And, it is imperative that we begin to
study and understand those connections.
I first began to think about this, really, in the context of my
church. I was raised, and am, a Methodist, and I can remember in my
junior high years having the experience of being taught and
ministered to by a youth minister who was wise beyond his years. He
assumed although we were only 13 or 14 or 15, we could learn
something about the world outside of us.
And, he spoke often that the families we were part of and the world
in which we live was a very, very tiny part of the whole global
experience. He took us to care for the children of migrant families
who came up from Mexico to pick the crops -- it's impossible for many
people to believe 1: now -- but when I grew up outside of Chicago,
three blocks from where I lived, in a suburb which is now totally a
concrete field, there were all kinds of other fields, where crops
were grown and people made a living by coming to pick tham, and we
were out there as youngsters, working with very different kinds of
families from our own.
And, he took us down to the central city of Chicago, whare we
learned to meet and talk children from very different kinds of
backgrounds, different cultures, with different sorts of expectations
for their lives.
I can remember thinking from that time forward that one of the great
mysteries that I was concerned about is how did we raise children
with different backgrounds and cultures and economic standards to
have to kind of competence and character that we needed to have to
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keep our country going and to make seciety really available in all of
its quality to as many of our people as possible.
When I went to college, in the middle and late sixties, it was clear
there were lots of forces at work in our society, many of which were
tearing and pulling at its very foundations. That prompted me to
think even more about what are our problems and how do we begin to
address them.
Then, in law school, my first month there, I read an article about
Marian Wright Edelman, who many of your heard speak yesterday, and
she Inspired me, and when she name TO Yale, 1 went and met with her
and said I wanted to try and work with her, and I did, from that
summer through the many years that have led to my being on her board
and chairing it now.
So these themes about how do we provide for families and how do we
give them the resources they need to do their job, has been a biding
concern of mine for many, many years. Being concerned about
something, though, doesn't necessarily mean that one understands it.
I have to confess that at the same time that I was concerned about
how we raise children and equip them and prepare them and nurture
them, I was also going through what many women my age have gone
through, and that 113, how do we define fo= ourselves as women what we
want out of our lives.
My mother did an absolutely superb job, in my opinion, again
presumptuous, of raising me. But she did it as a full time mother.
She did it having lunch on the table every day when I came home from
school, and she did it every afternoon when I came home :rom school.
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Yet, I, along with so many members of my generation, for reasons
that are complex and difficult, often, tc articulate, and often
encouraged by those very mothers who were there for us 24 hours per
day, chose a different way.
My mother never went to college. She absolutely balieved with all
her heart that I would, and I did. She was never a professional, but
she believed with all her heart that I could do whatever I set my
mind to, if I was willing to make the commitment. I chose to become a
lawyer, and to fulfill her confidence and faith in me.
But, it became increasingly difficult for me, along with many of my
friends and compatriots, to understand how this new role that we had
chosen to assume would fit. with the kind of marital and parenting
responsibilities that were also an absolutely essential part, we
hoped, of our own experience; but certainly of the numan experience.
That kind of tension and struggle between the redefinition of adult
roles and the needs that children have to have met, is one of the
defining struggles of the past 20 years. I= is acted out in our
homes, in our communities, and it has societal repercussions that
we're only beginning now to understand.
I know for a long time the idea of marriage, for me, was not as
clear as it certainly was for women of an earlier generation.
Because, I didn't know how it would fit in with this new personality
or person that I was developing.
Unfortunately I went to Yale Law School, where Bill Clinton also
chose to go. If that hadn't happened, I don't know what I'd be saying
to you this morning. But the first words I heard out of his mouth
occurred as I was walking through the Yale Law School Lounge, one day
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with a friend of mine, to get a Coke after class. I heard this voice
say, "And not only that, we grow the biggest watermelons in the
world."
I said, "Who is that?" and she replied, "That's Bill Clinton. He
comes from Arkansas and that's all he ever talks about."
I should have known then what it's taken me years to find out, that
was absolutely true. But I got to know him over the time of our being
in class. He will tell you that we got to know each other because we
were both in a clase where we were the two worst attenders. I think
that's a cruel criticism of my attendance at that class. But, it's
probably got some truth in it.
But we did get to know each other, and we found that we had many
things in common. We were both very concerned about our country and
its direction and fascinated by politics, and committed to public
service. We also realized that a marriage between two people like us
was never, ever going to be easy, if it could even happen at all.
When we graduated from law school, he want right back to Arkansas. I
wanted nothing to do with that. I had never been to Arkansas, and
like many people who grew up in Chicago, wasn't even sura where it
was. I did know that they grew the biggest watermelons in the world,
but that was about the limit of my knowledge.
So we thought, well, this was one of those relationships that can't
really stand the test of time, because we are so different, we have
career paths that probably cannot be reconciled, and so it's been a
very important experience, but it's probably finished.
That's not the way it worked out. I went to work, as Letty said,
for the Children's Defense Fund, first, and then, in January of 1974,
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went to work for the impeachment staff, that investigated President
Nixon, during Watergate. These are two very intense jobs.
During that time, Bill taught at the law school in Fayetteville,
and then decided to run for congress, because he couldn't find anyone
else who would run and raise some of the issues that he wanted
raised. So, again, it didn't seem very likely that we would ever find
our way together.
But, one of the real challenges, it seems to me, for wcmen growing
up such as I have, women as a friend of mine describes us as "on the
cusp," caught, between. two changing paradigms about what it means to
be a woman, a wife and a mother. One of the things, it seemed clear
to me, was a challenge for those on the cusp was to deal not just
with our ego, in which resided our ambitions, our education, our
motivations, our hopes for ourselves as an actor in the world, but
also our emotions.
It was clear to me, as much as I would have liked to have denied 1t,
that there was something very special about Bill and there was
something very important between UE. When President Nixon resigned,
in 1974, I had to make a decision. What was I to do?
I could have gone to work for a big law firm in a place like Chicago
or New York, I could have gono back to work for the Children's
Defense Fund, stayed on that career path that for whatever series of
motivations, I had been moving toward all of my life. I also knew
that I had to deal with a whole other side of life -- the emotional
side, where we live and where we grow and when all is said and done,
where the most important parts of life take place.
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So, I called the dean of the law school, and I said, "When I met
you, you said if I ever wanted to teach in Arkansas, you'd give me a
job. Is that still open?"
He said "Yes," so I moved to Arkansas in 1974. My family and friends
thought I had lost my mind. I was a little bit concerned about that
as wall. And I moved to Fayettevillo, Arkansas, a town smaller than
anywhere I had ever lived before, and to teach in a law school A
subject I didn't even know yet, because they hadn't assigned it to
me. They did that about two days before class.
so, it was an adventure, to put the most cptimistic look on it. But
it was something I had to do. Because even then, I knew that the
struggle that integrates our lives is an on-going struggle. And to
turn away from the challenges that are posed in our lives is to turn
away from who we are. And a lot of the dissonance and the
difficulties that conflict us today, are at bottom, I think, rooted
in this conflict about who we are to be in a very different world
than any of us were prepared to live in.
Eventually we got married, and I thought at that point that I had it
figured out. I thought "Well, here we are. We've gotten married." I
knew Bill was interested in politics, so he would go off in the
morning and do politics. I thought I'd married another professional.
You marry a doctor or a lawyer, you go off in the morning, you do
your job, and you come home.
I'd go off in the morning, I'd be a lawyer, and we'd come home in
the evening and talk about "How was your day?"
What I didn't realize was that when your in a political life, there
are a whole different set of obligations that are imposed upon you
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from the outside. And that was one of the greatest continuing
education courses I've ever been a part of.
Because even if intellectually I thought I knew what WELB going to
happen, being married to someone in politics, pragmatically I didn't
have a clue. And anyone who lived through my coming to terms with
what 1= meant to be a political spouse in Arkansas can attest to that.
I started off believing that one of the best things I could do for
my career and his was keeping our lives as separate as possible, SQ
there would never be any question of conflict of interest, since I
really did want to practice law.
so, I kept my maiden name, and you would have thought that I had
decided to do some terrible deed equivalent to killing the first
born. I didn't have any sense of how significant a decision that
would be seen as being by the people of Arkansas. So, I kept my name
and decided I would just keep practicing law, meeting at the dinner
table, going somewhere, and then Bill was elected governor. We had
our first and only child (maybe our first child) while he was in the
Governor's office. And that was like chapter two of the experience I
lived through, because to be pregnant while married to the governor
means that it is everybody's baby. It is not just your baby. And
people walk up and offer all kinds of unsolicited advice -- totally
off the wall -- whether you're looking for it or not.
It also means that when you go to Lamaze, which is what Bill and I
chose to do, a lot of the men in the state think he has lost his
mind. Especially the older men, who would stop him and say "I can't
believe you even want to be in the hospital, let alone the delivery
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room. I always used to support you until I learned you were going to
do something as crazy as that."
It also means that when it is finally time to go to the hospital,
you are surrounded by state policemen, all of whom want to be
helpful. But any woman who has ever gone to the hospital with one
man, and I don't mean to be sexist, : really don't, but there are
certain biological imperatives that still rule the universe. And if
you've gone to the hospital with one man, you know how difficult it
is to keep him functioning. But if you've gone to the hcspital with
your husband and four state troopers, you cannot believe what it's
like. Especially, when they're all running around having no idea what
they're supposed to do. Weeks before, in an effort to be organized
for this moment, I had posted what we would take for our Lamaze
experience, and one of the things was a little ice pack.
Well, I get out to the car, trying desperately to get to the
hospital, and I see this conscientious trooper, dragging a huge
plastic garbage bag. I said "Larry, what is that?"
He said "It's the ice you need."
I said, "I do not need a garbage bag full of ice."
But those are the kinds of experiences that my mother likes to call
growing experiences. I sometimes refer to them as "groaning
experiences." But they enable at least me to have some opportunity to
see how a lot of other people live, because if Bill had not been
elected governor and if I had not been as active as I'd tried to be
in our state, meeting a lot of people and working with them, I would
never have had the opportunity to be part of as many families as I
have been, nor would I have had the opportunity to see hcw this
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struggle between the traditional model and this new one that is yet
being born is played out in the lives of very many different kinds of
people.
It is often impossible for me to imagine what it must be like to be
the single parent of children who has to be at work at 4:00 in the
morning. I can't even think about how you must need to organize your
life in order to do that. And yet, hundreds of thousands of women and
men do that every day. so, being in the position that I've been in,
has enabled me to at least grow in understanding of what families are
going through and how difficult these times are.
I don't think that we're even nea= writing the last chapter on it.
My experience is maybe a little bit atypical because so much of our
married life and our parenting has been played out in the public eye.
But, I think the stresses and the strains are the same across the
board. And one of my hopes is, through efforts like these and other
kinds of outreach, processes and communities around the country, we
can begin lending a helping hand tc families who are going through
this transition.
I don't think it will do us much good merely to be quiet, or to list
the statistics that exemplify the trouble that we're in in this
country. I do think it's time for us to take a deep breath and say
"We cannot turn back the clock overnight, but we can begin trying to
make life a little easier through the day, for all those people who
are trying to do the best they can to define their roles.
And, if we can move in that direction, then I think we will have
made some progress, and I appreciate the chance to have shared this
with you today.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER FOR H. CLINTON:
IN THE ISSUE OF BLENDING A PUBLIC LIFE WITH A PUBLIC LIFE, A
POLITICAL LIFE, HOW MUCH OF THE MEDIA INTRUSION INTO THE PERSONAL AND
FAMILY LIVES OF PUBLIC FIGURES IS APPROPRIATE AND HOW MUCH IS
INAPPROPRIATE?
HLLARY: I think that a certain amount of media interest and intrusion
is part of the job and it answers the legitimata needs that people
have to know something about their public leaders. It has become
increasingly difficult, though, for those of us in public life to
understand where the lines are, and who is drawing them.
It is difficult to live a life that has some personal integrity to
it, to deal with the problems and the challenges that come to any
family or marriage or individual, if you think every single decision
you might make would be on the front page of the newspaper.
so, I don't have an easy answer for that, Dan, but it has been a
continuing problem for us. One quick story, when our daughter was
born, one of my goals from the morning she was born, was to insure
that she would have as normal a life as we could imagine under the
circumstances, so I didn't have a million photographers at the
hospital and we haven't exposed her to the press. We have kept her, I
think, with a sense of privacy, so that she could develop who she was
as opposed to being told very early, "Go do this and look good doing
it, because the press will be there. So, we've tried to walk that
line, and it is very hard, and it is one of the main reasons why
people opt out of public life, today.
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And, I wish that the press would realize that the more intrusive
they get, the shallower the political leadership they will get, in my
opinion.
IS
TEL:
Oct
07'94
17:40 No. 002 P.02
Remarks by William J. Bennett*
Christian Coalition Conference
September 16, 1994
I want to discuss with you the coarsening of American society and how although
the government is a problem and the government is an auxiliary of a lot that is going
wrong we, the American people, are contributing to our own coarsening. It is an
act in a series of acts which we have to stop.
If we believe that our children are moral and spiritual beings, we should invite them
to activities which will encourage them in that direction. But we are seeing a
continuing assault on our children. Many of us who have been taking the pulse of the
culture, going around the country and occasionally watching TV and the movies, are
getting increasingly concerned about it. I for one am getting even more impatient with
what I sec on television and in the movies. I am tired of taking my child to see
Batman and having to leave in the middle of it because of the casual cruelty and the
knowing sex. I am tired of a stupid, ridiculous, pointless movie like Natural Born
Killers getting the kind of attention that it has. It's produced by people that don't
have any moral sense. But where is the moral sense of the people that go to see it? I
am embarrassed when I go see one of these movies. But you know, it's hard to know
what to go to see; it's hard to know what to trust. I went to sec the Flintstones with
my kids. I didn't know that the seduction of a secretary was one of the underlying
motifs of this film. I thought the Flintstones would be safe. Is it possible for these
guys to make one movie without their garbage? Without their casual cruelty and their
knowing sex?
If you walk around Washington today, you will see billboards at the bus stops with
advertisements for a TV show called Melrose Place. And written across the
advertisement are the words, "Mondays are a Bitch Melrose Place," and there is a
picture of a woman. Where is the National Organization for Women on this? Why
aren't they protesting this? Why do we have this out in public? Why, when I flew
back from the West Coast yesterday, do I have to sit on an airplane and watch the
coming attractions with a lot of writhing bodies? Why do I have to do that and
why do the kids have to see that? Why is so much of what is on TV and in the
movies seemingly out to destroy the innocence of young people? What has it all
come to? We are reaping the whirlwind. You read about eleven-year-old Robert
Sandifer, who killed a fourteen-year-old girl, and who himself was later executed.
He was buried last week - buried with a teddy bear and a stuffed toy pig, his favorite
toys, to keep him company in his casket. It has come to this.
I have been talking to cultural anthropologists and historians lately to find out about
historical precedents for the situation which we are in. Is there a historical precedent
for reversing the kind of moral decline that we are experiencing now? People are
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hard pressed to find onc. Of course, there is no historical precedent for America,
either. And the capacity for self-renewal in this country is well-known, so we will
likely, I hope, with effort, bc able to turn this around. But a friend of mine, an
anthropologist, said to me just a few months ago, "It dawned on me recently that we
have now become, in many places, the kind of society that in the 19th century almost
every Christian denomination felt compelled to missionize." If you were in the 19th
century and you looked out and got reports of a society with the kinds of pathologies
that we have, you would send missionaries to it. You would send missionaries to
preach to the people to try to help them come around and to come around for the sake
of themselves and their children.
We have a lot of work to do.
In a book I am working on, one of the governing metaphors is going to be lifting
people up instead of leveling people down. In the last 30 years, it seems to me that
we have donc almost everything we can think of to level down. We have leveled
down standards. We have accepted behavior in public that we never would have
tolerated three decades ago. We have leveled down people's expectations. And we
have leveled down the aspirations of the young, so that when one talks to young
people today, they don't talk about aspiring to be a certain kind of person. They talk
about wanting to grow up and to have certain kinds of experiences: to travel, to have
money, to do this, to experience that, but not to be a certain kind of person. We
have loveled down and down and down. We said for a number of years, "get down,"
and we did. We are down. And now, it is time to start lifting ourselves up. Lifting
ourselves up in the schools, in the communities, and most of all in the most important
place -- in the family, in the home.
How has it happened in the last thirty years that a movement which intended the
liberation of women from oppression led to the liberation of men from their
responsibilities? How did this come to be? Many men have been sent the signal that
it's all right to hit-and-run, that their role as father is limited to that of genitor
[biological role], not that of pater. Pater is where you take the responsibility of
fatherhood you promise the world that you will keep your son from doing it harm,
and you promise your son that, to the best of your ability, you will keep the world
from doing harm to him. But in America today, 60% of our boys will grow up
without fathers in their lives at some important part of their childhood. Fatherhood as
a concept is disappearing from some communities.
Little boys want to be men -- nothing has been more clear to me as a father of two
sons -- but when they are born they do not know what it means. So they look for
signals, they look to other people to see what it means to be a man. If they sec
garbage on TV and see garbage on the streets -- garbage behavior by men -- that's
what they think it means. If they see something else -- someone else in their lives,
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particularly someone close to them -- then they may get another lesson of what it
means to be a man. But supposing that nobody's there when it counts to send that
signal and give that message? Then they will probably grow up imitating the guy
who's closest to them -- in the school yard, or maybe the leader of a gang, or
someone who is on TV. In the late 20th century, many children are left with a very
frail and diminished notion of fatherhood. For some boys, the only time they see
anything that resembles male authority is when it's too late, in the form of a cop, or
in the form of a judge, or the form of a prison. We are asking prisons to do what
fathers used to do; fathers will [either] do their job, or prisons will have to do more
of theirs.
I want to talk today about the responsibility of the upper and middle class for what
has happened to the rest of society, and for what, in part, has happened to [the poor].
When you have an earthquake somewhere in the world, how much damage is done
depends upon how strong the foundation is, how strong the structure is. When I went
to Hollywood and talked about the drug problem a few years ago, they said, "Oh, it's
gone now. Nobody uses drugs in Beverly Hills. We've all been through the Betty
Ford treatment center." Almost everybody was able to afford a good treatment
program. But down the road in Watts, there was devastation. When, metaphorically
speaking, the carth shook in Los Angeles in the form of the drug problem, the rich
could survive. They could buy good treatment programs. They could cushion the
blow. But the poor were destroyed. And that is often the way it is with social
pathologies.
You see the same thing in education. You gel some stupid educational fad in the
schools, and the wealthy and middle class find a way to avoid it, by sending their
children to private schools, or by raising heck with the teachers. But those same
ideas might do terrible damage to kids who are going to school in another part of the
city.
Crime may increase in the middle class neighborhoods -- and in many middle class
neighborhoods, crime has in fact not increased -- but in the inner cities, crime
explodes and creates the kind of cauldron of violence and terror that we are now
secing.
The acts that we perform in the middle class, the signals that we send on television,
the things that we do as the largest demographic group in America -- the group that
everybody seems to look to and model themselves on -- have enormous implications.
This has had no greater implication than on the whole area of family. Let me explain
to you what I mean. I am a strong opponent of welfare. I have argued consistently
-- and I am very proud to say our group, Empower America, helped give some
Members of Congress some backbone on this issue -- that we need to end the current
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wclfare system. We have to stop subsidizing out-of-wedlock births. It is as if the
government took out an ad in the paper in the mid-1960s, saying "Wanted for
government program: Women. Must be single. Must be willing to have babies.
Must not get married. Must not hold a job. Apply here." Only a few women
applied early on, but as the men left and as they got the signal that somcone else
would take care of mother and child, they poured out the door faster than ever. And
more and more women applied.
In 1960, 73,000 women between the ages of 18 and 34 were never-married mothers.
In 1980, there were a million women between 18 and 34 who were never-married
mothers. And in 1990, there are 3 million women between the ages of 18 and 34
who are never-married mothers. Welfare has an awful lot to do with it because of the
signals it sends. It's time we said, "End welfare." People have got to be responsible
for their lives.
But I will tell you something else: in thinking about this as responsibly as I can, I
believe it is wrong for this society to put most of the burden on the poor, because the
behavior of the middle class has been a model -- and in this case, a negative model --
for the poor people of society. It is wrong to ask poor blacks to pick up all the
damage caused by a lot of people in the white middle class.
When we loosened the marital bond on the middle class of this country, we destroyed
it for many of the poor. When the people who are supposed to be the model,
supposed to be the example, supposed to represent what America stands for, stopped
taking marriage seriously, it was a signal for the rest of society. Every individual is
responsible for his own life, but we are also responsible for others and we are our
brother's keeper.
The breakdown of marital commitment and fidelity... when it starts [among the upper
and middle class] -- when it starts with people who are supposed to bc the model for
other people -- then the whole thing spreads as a conflagration through society.
What the middle class accepts as conventional and acceptable -- 'if things don't work
out, just get a divorce' -- when it gets translated down to the socio-economic level, it
bccomes "no regard" for the institution of marriage at all. Do we not think there is a
connection between the things we do in suburbia and the things that go on in the city?
The damage done is large.
[Some] groups have been fixated on homosexuality. I understand the aversion to
homosexuality. I understand the difference between approval and tolerance.... But if
you look in terms of damage to the children of America, you cannot compare what
the homoscxual movement has done in terms of damage, to what divorce has done to
this society. In terms of the consequences to children, it is not even close.
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Some may wish to focus and obsess on homosexuality because for some it's so far
from them it's so far from anything they could be tempted to or by and so that's
what they wish to talk about. Divorce and infidelity are something much more
familiar to people; they are something much closer to home for a lot of people. As
Karl Zinsmeister, a great scholar, has said, 'A lot of guys run off with their
secretaries or mcmbers of their parish because it's fun.' And the rules are broken
down. If you leave your wife and gel yourself a 'trophy wife,' you're not going to be
greeted with condemnation or even a raised eye by most pcople, because it has
become a convention. But what has the convention done to American society? Some
people aren't comfortable talking about divorce and adultery, but it seems to mc we
have to talk about them. They are before us, and they have had great consequences.
How do we know the different value attached to this in American society? Next time
you arc in the store, go up to the Hallmark cards, and check what the cards say to the
people who are getting divorced: "Greetings to a hot new single." But to the children
of divorce, parents cards said this, "I'm sorry I won't be there when you need me."
We know who benefits from this disintegration of family; WC know who suffers from
it. It is time we talked honestly and candidly about it.
During a trip not long ago, I saw the Oprah Winfrey Show, where a divorced mom
was talking about her active dating life and her sister said, "You go out too much."
The mom said, "Three times a week isn't too much." The sister said, "What about
your children? They have needs." And the mom said, "I have my needs, too." In
that statement, ladies and gentlemen, 2,000 years of civilization crumbled. It used to
be axiomatic, that if you had a child, the needs of your child took precedence over
yours. That is not the case anymore.
I'd like to think I'm a realist; I live in the real world; I've seen enough marriages
dissolve around me. There are some marriages that are not meant to be. I have seen
abuse of wives by their husbands. I've seen other problems in marriages that make
you think this thing ought to stop. But surely nothing can justify the numbers we are
talking about now -- a million kids every year put into the system as a result of
divorce. The statistics about divorce are increasingly discouraging because it
indicates a failure of commitment. We have to think hard and long as a society about
commitment and conviction, and whether the new philosophy of self-expression
what its standing is against our old notions of honor and commitment and fidelity.
A marriage I know of that dissolved six months ago was explained to me by the wife
in the following terms: "It just wasn't working out. We weren't as happy as we
thought we would be." Where did we get this notion that the sole purpose of this
enterprise was happiness? Where did this idea come from? It's bad philosophy. it's
bad sociology, and it's bad psychology. What I am asking for is proportionality.
Let's look at where the real problems are, identify them, and speak to them honestly.
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I want to end by saying that there are secularists and guardians of contemporary
liberalism who disagree with you and your views. They don't like what you stand
for. And, just as important, they don't like what you stand against. One of the
reasons many of us like you is because we think you know what to stand for .. and
just as important, you know what you won't stand for. There are fights that matter,
there are some fights worth being in, and you are in them.
Politics matters. But the solution to what ails us, I have become increasingly
convinced, lies beyond politics. It lies with a change of the heart. St. Augustine
wrote about the ordo amoris, the "order of the loves." I think that most of our
problems, in the cnd, can be reduced to what the "order of the loves" are. What do
you love the most? Figure out how you spend your time and that will probably tell
you what you love the most.
Two reminders: First, regarding the tone and attitude and manner in which we fight
the good fight, remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Always be sure that
you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the
temptation of becoming biuer. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with
dignity and discipline, using only the weapons of love."
And the second thing is to remind ourselves -- and this is especially important here
inside the beltway -- that as Christians, we are pilgrims and sojourners, citizens of
heaven, not of earth. Stay involved in politics if you wish. But do it as your civic
duty, not as your ultimate destiny. For your ultimate destiny is elsewhere.
#
The speech was delivered from notes and has been slightly edited.