The following statement, abridged from President Clinton's 1996 book, Between Hope and History, sets forth his vision of how individuals, families, the private sector, and government can accept their share of responsibility for themselves and one another as the world approaches the 21st century.

America's course for the future is rooted in three fundamental American values that have shaped the character of our people: ensuring that all citizens have the opportunity to make the most of their own lives; expecting every citizen to shoulder the responsibility to seize that opportunity, and working together as a community to live up to all we can be as a nation.

Opportunity

The idea of opportunity has been a unifying force throughout our history. It draws out our best efforts. It draws others to our shores. And it draws all of us together into a common American Dream. It is the first part of the basic bargain of America.

For many Americans, this is the best of times. But I am very aware that there are still too many Americans who are having a tough time, people for whom the gears of our economic engine don't quite mesh. Part of the problem is that what creates jobs and opportunity in America is an economic dynamism that is inherently turbulent and disruptive. New businesses form and old ones die; new jobs are created and old jobs are eliminated.

We have to face the fact that some of our fellow citizens who are more than willing to work hard and play by the rules are not being rewarded. The answer to their difficulties is to get more growth, more high-wage jobs, and more invested in people and in our future, in research and technology, in education and skills, and in strengthening working families.

The future prospects of average Americans today are being driven by one central force: rapid economic change -- in what we produce, how we produce, and who produces. The appropriate response to these changes is to increase investment in people power by individuals in themselves, by private industry in its employees and production technologies, and by government in the basic building blocks of economic opportunity -- education, training, and technology -- so we can capture and share widely the benefits of this rapid change.

I believe our job as a nation is to make sure Americans have the ability to make the most of their lives as individuals, as workers, as citizens. We cannot guarantee every American success, but we can make sure every American has a chance. And if we do, we will all have more opportunity in twenty-first century America.

Responsibility

Opportunity is only half of America's basic bargain. The other half is responsibility.

Our Founding Fathers understood this. They understood very clearly that Freedom works only when it is exercised with responsibility. In the Preamble to our Constitution they said our objectives were not just to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves," but also "to our posterity." What's more, they said it was our job to "promote the general welfare." The latter, they reasoned, would turn our attention away from ourselves and toward our responsibilities to each other. So from the beginning, opportunity and responsibility have gone hand in hand.

America was built upon a foundation of mutual responsibility. Strengthening that foundation is critical if we want to realize our vision of the twenty-first century. Because the answers to our social problems require people to reassert control over their own lives and to assume responsibility for their conduct and their obligations, we have to develop community-based approaches that allow individuals to respond personally to these problems. We must be willing to help people make decisions that are not destructive to them and costly for the rest of us.

In the last four years, we have pursued this responsibility in four broad areas: strengthening individual and community responsibility through welfare reform; meeting public responsibilities by reinventing the Federal Government; encouraging businesses to take more responsibility for the welfare of workers and their families, and protecting our natural environment.

Nowhere is the issue of individual responsibility better illustrated than welfare. During the past three and one-half years, we cut welfare red tape and approved welfare-to-work projects in some 40 states, covering 75 percent of people on welfare in the United States. Now, with the passage of new federal welfare reform legislation, we have a chance to end a system that too often undermines the basic values of work, responsibility, and family that has hurt the very people it was designed to help.

The new federal law will give states and communities the chance to move people from welfare to work, impose time limits on welfare benefits, and give people the child care and health care assistance they need to move from welfare to work without hurting their children.

This is government helping to lead in all these areas. But before government, corporate, or community responsibility, we must have individual responsibility. Ultimately we must insist that citizens, businesses, and communities help themselves and assume responsibility for improving life in the United States person by person, family by family, block by block, community by community.

The Federal Government alone cannot begin to provide solutions to all our problems, although it can play an important role in meeting these challenges. Exactly what government should do, and how it should do it, are especially critical questions as we deal with changes in work and family life and other new challenges of the twenty-first century. That is why rethinking and reinventing government has been a priority in the past several years.

The Founders created the Federal Government to do what only a national government could do, such as oversee foreign affairs and national defense. From a limited number of initial responsibilities, the government has grown to encompass an increasingly broad range of social concerns. Yet America has always been skeptical of "big government." During most of our history, we have remained philosophically conservative about its role -- even when circumstances required an expanded role for government.

The debate over government's role has acquired a new urgency for three reasons: None of the old approaches to our social problems have worked very well; we cannot afford a government that is wasteful or too bureaucratic, and the changes in information technology and the organization of work require that government learn to do more with less.

The question now is, how should we change government? The answer is, Americans don't want our government gutted. There are some things that government must or should do: Protect us against enemies; come to our aid when disaster strikes, and help fight crime, to name a few.

We don't want government in our face, but we do want it on our side when we need it. The real issue isn't big government versus small government. I believe America needs a government that is both smaller and more responsive. One that shifts authority from the federal level to states and localities as much as possible. One that relies upon the private sector when the private sector can do the job best. One that works better and costs less.

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has formed a partnership with the private sector to spur home ownership to record levels. It is giving more vouchers to poor people to choose their own housing, and is committed to replacing 300,000 units of crime-ridden public housing with new, safer garden apartment complexes.

Responsibility is simply the flip side of opportunity, and together they represent the two sides of the coin of citizenship in America. When opportunity and responsibility are in balance, we achieve the objective we seek -- a community of purpose.

Community

Working together to achieve common ground is one of our most important national values. America is not just about independence, but also about interdependence. The good life is about more than individual liberty and material well-being; it is about cultivating community relationships and attending to public concerns.

Our ability to build strong communities begins with building strong families. But these days, a host of problems beset even the most vigilant parents and the best children. In most families, just the pressures of modern life are making it hard to give children the time, energy, and attention they need. For most families, it's harder to succeed at home and at work these days.

Any society that forces people to choose between these two things is going to fail. We need to make it possible for families to succeed both at home and at work. Families can't solve these problems alone. We, as a community, have an obligation here. Government can provide some help, such as the Family Leave Act and immunization programs.

But government's role in strengthening families, while important, is limited. All Americans must commit themselves to this goal. It takes mothers and fathers, the support of community organizations, cooperation of businesses, as well as the assistance of government at all levels.

More than two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson argued that American democracy would rise or fall on the strength of "yeoman farmers" -- ordinary people who have a stake in, and take responsibility for, how our society works. Today's yeoman farmers are America's families. Their values, the responsibility they take for shaping their own future, determine much about what we can become as a nation.

But families can't be strong if they're mired in welfare, or if the opportunity to support their children is uncertain, or if their homes or neighborhoods are not safe. The process of strengthening, of taking responsibility, begins in the home, extends into the neighborhood, grows out to the community, and creates a better America.

Every great religion teaches devotion to family and charity and compassion toward others -- the very values we need to build enduring communities. Respect for faith and family and respect for others has helped Americans to work together for more than two centuries.

If we continue to follow the Opportunity-Responsibility-Community strategy, we will build a nation where all our children, wherever they start in life, will have the chance to live their dreams.

The humble American one-cent coin is an explicit declaration that America is about both individual liberty and community obligation. On one side, next to Lincoln's portrait, is a single word: "Liberty." On the other side is our national motto, E Pluribus Unum -- "Out of Many, One." It does not say, "Every Man for Himself." These two commitments -- to protect personal freedom and seek common ground -- are the measure of our worth.

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From Between Hope and History by President Bill Clinton. Copyright (C) 1996 by William Jefferson Clinton. Used by permission of Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc (http://www.randomhouse.com). No use of this material is authorized without the express written consent of the publisher.