名人英语演讲稿(8)

and yet, there is a real resistance, a turning away from the political process. i hope that some of you will be public servants and will even run for office yourself, not to win a position to make and impression on your friends at your 20th reunion, but because you understand how important it is for each of us as citizens to make a commitment to our democracy.

your generation, the first one born after the social upheavals of the 60’s and 70’s, in the midst of the technological advances of the 80’s and 90’s, are inheriting an economy, a society and a government that has yet to understand fully, or even come to grips with, our rapidly changing world.

and so bring your values and experiences and insights into politics. dare to help make, not just a difference in politics, but create a different politics. some have called you the generation of choice. you’ve been raised with multiple choice tests, multiple channels, multiple websites and multiple lifestyles. you’ve grown up choosing among alternatives that were either not imagined, created or available to people in prior generations.

you’ve been invested with far more personal power to customize your life, to make more free choices about how to live than was ever thought possible. and i think as i look at all the surveys and research that is done, your choices reflect not only freedom, but personal responsibility.

the social indicators, not the headlines, the social indicators tell a positive story: drug use and cheating and arrests being down, been pregnancy and suicides, drunk driving deaths being down. community service and religious involvement being up. but if you look at the area of voting among 18 to 29 year olds, the numbers tell a far more troubling tale. many of you i know believe that service and community volunteerism is a better way of solving the issues facing our country than political engagement, because you believe-choose one of the following multiples or choose them all-government either can’t understand or won’t make the right choices because of political pressures, inefficiency, incompetence or big money influence.

well, i admit there is enough truth in that critique to justify feeling disconnected and alienated. but at bottom, that’s a personal cop-out and a national peril. political conditions maximize the conditions for individual opportunity and responsibility as well as community. americorps and the peace corps exist because of political decisions. our air, water, land and food will be clean and safe because of political choices. our ability to cure disease or log onto the internet have been advanced because of politically determined investments. ethnic cleansing in kosovo ended because of political leadership. your parents and grandparents traveled here by means of government built and subsidized transportation systems. many used gi bills or government loans, as i did, to attend college.