We’ve got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem:  the epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage.  I have sent to Congress a plan to target schools all over this country with anti-pregnancy programs that work.  But government can only do so much.  Tonight, I call on parents and leaders all across this country to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference.  We can do this and we must.

And I would like to say a special word to our religious leaders.  You know, I’m proud of the fact that the United States has more house of worship per capita than any country in the world.  These people, who lead our houses of worship, can ignite their congregations to carry their faith into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of the people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of all we hold dear, because so much of what must be done must come from the inside out.  And our religious leaders and their congregations can make all the difference.  They have a role in the New Covenant as well.

There must be more responsibility for all of our citizens.  You know it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble stay off the streets and in school.  It takes a lot of people to build the Habitat for Humanity houses that the Speaker celebrates on his lapel pin.  It takes a lot of people to provide the people power for all the civic organizations in this country that made our communities mean so much to most of us when we were kids.  It takes every parent to teach the children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage them to learn and grow and to say no to the wrong things but also to believe that they can be whatever they want to be.

I know it’s hard when you’re working harder for less, when you’re under great stress, to do these things.  A lot of our people don’t have the time or the emotional stress they think to do the work of citizenship.  Most of us in politics haven’t helped very much.  For years, we’ve mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads—­either promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and frustrations.  And more and more of our citizens now get most of their information in very negative and aggressive ways that is hardly conducive to honest and open conversations.  But the truth is we have got to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different views.

If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength of America, as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground.  And in this day everybody has a responsibility to do more of that.  We simply cannot wait for a tornado, a fire or a flood to behave like Americans ought to behave in dealing with one another.