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Edited on Mon Feb-16-04 01:39 PM by TruthIsAll
Good evening:
There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we're going to do it again. I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here. Over 75 percent of white Americans own their home, and less than 50 percent of Hispanos and African Americans don't own their home. And that's a gap, that's a homeownership gap. And we've got to do something about it.
We've got pockets of persistent poverty in our society, which I refuse to declare defeat—I mean, I refuse to allow them to continue on. And so one of the things that we're trying to do is to encourage a faith-based initiative to spread its wings all across America, to be able to capture this great compassionate spirit. You'll hear people say it's racist to test. Folks, it's racist not to test. Because guess who gets shuffled through the system oftentimes? Children whose parents don't speak English as a first language, inner-city kids. It's so much easier to quit on somebody than to remediate.
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning? The illiteracy level of our children are appalling. And if you're interested in the quality of education and you're paying attention to what you hear at Laclede, why don't you volunteer? Why don't you mentor a child how to read?
The students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the country. Within months, I knew many of them. Reading is the basics for all learning. We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal—federal cufflink.
Whether you're here by birth, or whether you're in America by choice, you contribute to the vitality of our life. And for that, we are grateful. The public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens, and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society.
So thank you for reminding me about the importance of being a good mom and a great volunteer as well. Our country puts $1 billion a year up to help feed the hungry. And we're by far the most generous nation in the world when it comes to that, and I'm proud to report that. This isn't a contest of who's the most generous. I'm just telling you as an aside. We're generous. We shouldn't be bragging about it. But we are. We're very generous. It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America.
You've also got to measure in order to begin to effect change that's just more—when there's more than talk, there's just actual—a paradigm shift. I'm the master of low expectations. I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.
First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill. I know there's a lot of young ladies who are growing up wondering whether or not they can be champs. And they see the championship teams from USC and University of Portland here, girls who worked hard to get to where they are, and they're wondering about the example they're setting. What is life choices about?. Now, we talked to Joan Hanover. She and her husband, George, were visiting with us. They are near retirement—retiring—in the process of retiring, meaning they're very smart, active, capable people who are retirement age and are retiring.
I think the American people—I hope the American–I don't think, let me—I hope the American people trust me. The goals for this country are peace in the world. And the goals for this country are a compassionate American for every single citizen. That compassion is found in the hearts and souls of the American citizens.
In other words, I don't think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family. People say, how can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil? You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you.
If you don't have any ambitions, the minimum-wage job isn't going to get you to where you want to get, for example. In other words, what is your ambitions? And oh, by the way, if that is your ambition, here's what it's going to take to achieve it.
The federal government and the state government must not fear programs who change lives, but must welcome those faith-based programs for the embetterment of mankind. I love the idea of a school in which people come to get educated and stay in the state in which they're educated.
I want to thank the dozens of welfare to work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves. And so, in my State of the—my State of the Union—or state—my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation—I asked Americans to give 4,000 years—4,000 hours over the next—the rest of your life—of service to America. That's what I asked—4,000 hours.
I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right. If a person doesn't have the capacity that we all want that person to have, I suspect hope is in the far distant future, if at all. We must have the attitude that every child in America—regardless of where they're raised or how they're born—can learn. It is time to set aside the old partisan bickering and finger-pointing and name-calling that comes from freeing parents to make different choices for their children.
I think we're making progress. We understand where the power of this country lay. It lays in the hearts and souls of Americans. It must lay in our pocketbooks. It lays in the willingness for people to work hard. But as importantly, it lays in the fact that we've got citizens from all walks of life, all political parties, that are willing to say, I want to love my neighbor. I want to make somebody's life just a little bit better.
Of all states that understands local control of schools, Iowa is such a state. You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. Home is important. It's important to have a home. One reason I like to highlight reading is, reading is the beginnings of the ability to be a good student. And if you can't read, it's going to be hard to realize dreams; it's going to be hard to go to college. So when your teachers say, read—you ought to listen to her.
I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be—a literate country and a hopefuller country. It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.
I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.
I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children. One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected. I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans.
As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards. I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.
Unfairly but truthfully, our party has been tagged as being against things. Anti-immigrant, for example. And we're not a party of anti-immigrants. Quite the opposite. We're a party that welcomes people. Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis. I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants. And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go to the university. How do you know if you don't measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?
We ought to make the pie higher. What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.
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