Obama: We Must Restore a ‘Sense of Common Purpose’ in America

‘We are at our best when we rise to what the moment demands’

“The specific issue that has to be addressed making sure that people have confidence that police and law enforcement and prosecutors are serving everybody equally. There’s a larger question of restoring a sense of common purpose and at the heart of the American ideal is this sense that we’re in it together, that nobody is guaranteed success, but everybody has got access to the possibilities of success, and that we are willing to work not just to make sure our own children had pathways to success, but that everybody does. That at some level everybody is our kid. Everybody is our responsibility. We are going to give back to everybody. And we do that because it’s the right thing to do. And we do it because selfishly that’s how this country is going to advance and everybody is going to be better off.

Big challenges like these should galvanize our country. Big challenges like these should unite us around an opportunity and agenda that brings us together rather than pulling us apart. We are at our best when we rise to what the moment demands, whether it’s putting more people back to work, making sure those jobs pay a decent wage so  that incomes and wages go up,whether it’s educating more of our can kids for the 21st century, whether it’s fixing our broken immigration system. To do what many of you have done and made it the cause of your life and that is opening the doors of higher education to more of our fellow Americans. These are big challenges, but they’re solvable. As long as we feel a sense of urgency and we work together.

And that is why I was so hardened by the January meeting, and that’s why I’m even more encouraged by this meeting. Our higher education system is one of the things that makes America exceptional. There’s no place else that has the assets we do when it comes to higher education. People from all over the world aspire to come here and study here. And that is a good thing. America thrived in the 20th century because we made high school free. We sent a generation to college. We cultivated the most educated workforce in the world.”

 

Video files
Full
Compact
Audio files
Full
Compact