I've been talking about income inequality in America for twenty years, and when I was president, people didn't pay much attention to it, probably because wages were going up. But I don't think I've given a single solitary speech since I left office that I hadn't talked about it. It's a problem around the world and within the United States. So these people have put that on the agenda.
The greatest progress we have made, and the greatest progress we have yet to make, is in the human heart. In the end, all the world's wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit.
At the same time, old confrontations have taken on frightening urgency, especially the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East. Progress on these and other global challenges requires us to develop a larger strategy for American foreign policy, rooted in a fundamental commitment to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity, freedom and security.
If you come from a wealthy country with open borders, unless you seriously believe you can kill, imprison or occupy all your enemies, you have to make a world with more friends and fewer enemies - with more partners and fewer terrorists.
We have seen a man dragged to death in Texas simply because he was black. A young man murdered in Wyoming simply because he was gay. In the last year alone, we've seen the shootings of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish children simply because of who they were. This is not the American way. We must draw the line. Without delay, we must pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And we should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.
I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn't have to come at the expense of our economy's bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn't have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both.
This is a huge problem. If we don't deal with this within just a few years, you will have island nations flooded; you will have the agricultural balance of most countries completely changed; you will have a dramatic increase in the number of severe, unmanageable weather events... And the good news is that we can now deal with this problem - and strengthen our economic growth, not weaken it.
We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.
Tonight, I propose a 21st Century Crime Bill to deploy the latest technologies and tactics to make our communities even safer. Our balanced budget will help put up to 50,000 more police on the street in the areas hardest hit by crime, and then to equip them with new tools from crime-mapping computers to digital mug shots. We must break the deadly cycle of drugs and crime.
We have to change the whole job structure of America. We have got to basically reorient our economy toward the future.
I love the book signings, you know, because I get to talk to real people, and a staggering number of people have said something very specific to me. "The Family Leave Law saved my family," or "Made our lives better," or, "The education aid that you provided made it possible for me to go to college." One man at 50 years of age got his college degree.
It's important that the American people understand that President has proposed and passed this stimulus plan not as the end-all and be-all to our economic woes but as our bridge over troubled water until we get the finance system, the banking system working again.
People ought to be going over this, finding things they don't like. Congress has clearly proved they can act in a hurry. If there's something wrong with it, it can be amended. If something needs to be kicked in, it can be put in. If something needs to be taken out, it can be taken out.
It's the biggest public health problem in America, the rising rates of obesity among our young people and very heavy statistics among our adult population.
One of the things that I realized when I left office was that in the 1990's citizens across the world applied more power than they had ever had, as compared with the government, because of more people living under democracies than dictatorships for the first time, the power of the internet, which the young Chinese used to basically change China's policy on the SARS epidemic, and shut it down, and because of the rise in non-governmental organizations like my foundation.
Let's adopt some short-term strategies to get growth going and then let's have a long-term debt reduction package. That's what I think we should do and I think it will work.
If you go against someone, you say, you can't vote for these Democrats, they don't have good values, they're not good people, they're weak, they're spineless, they're don't love America, they're giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein, that's the kind of thing I think is bad for America, because it stops the voters from thinking. And any time you stop thinking in a free society you get in trouble.
[Hillary Clinton] isinsatiably curious, she's a natural leader, she's a good organiser, and she's the best darn change maker I ever met in my entire life. This is a really important point for you to take out of this convention.
I saw my job [as president] as to try to move the world from an unstable condition of interdependence toward more integrated cooperative world community. Therefore, my approach was to cooperate wherever possible and to build institutions of cooperation, an expanded NATO, the World Trade Organization, the Summit of the Americas, the Asian Pacific Leaders, all those, the coalition to fight in Bosnia and Kosovo, to cooperate wherever possible but to act alone if we had to.
I'm proud to say that there is not a single Russian nuclear missile pointed at an American child.
Two-thirds of the Iranian people would like to be reconciled with the West. They don't like the fanaticism of the governing religious council. It's the only place in the world where the last six elections have been won by the more progressive candidate, two for president, two for the mayors, two for the parliament. So most people there are sympathetic to the world we Americans want to build, whether we're Republicans or Democrats. On the other hand, almost everybody there wants them to have nuclear power. They see it as a status symbol, and a sense of their own security.
Some people say well we need a change. Hillary Clinton is been around a long, she sure has, and she's sure been worth every single year she's put into making people's lives better.
When I was in office I expressed admiration and respect and even affection for Republicans that I knew and liked and cared about, and I tried to find ways to work with them. I think the Democrats should do that, and just keep trying to lower the temperature.
We still have too many Americans who give in to their fears of those who are different from them. Not so long ago, swastikas were painted on the doors of some African-American members of our Special Forces at Ft. Bragg. They are special forces. They do not deserve to have swastikas on their doors.
But the truth is, countries have to do what is best in each instance to pursue both their interest and their values.
