. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants,
larger than yourself--and in your days you will add not just to the
wealth of our country, but to its character.

America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential
work at home--the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving
toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of
liberty.

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of
economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence.
This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead
Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we
will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the
needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and
future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our
schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of
homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance--preparing
our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every
citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow
Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more
prosperous and just and equal.

In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private
character--on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of
conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the
governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families,
supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national
life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the
Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in
every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came
before--ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday,
today, and forever.

In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by
service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not
mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women
who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at
our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember
that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the
habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the
baggage of bigotry at the same