Tonight I am charging the White House Domestic Council to present me by December 1, 1986, an evaluation of programs and a strategy for immediate action to meet the financial, educational, social, and safety concerns of poor families.  I’m talking about real and lasting emancipation, because the success of welfare should be judged by how many of its recipients become independent of welfare.  Further, after seeing how devastating illness can destroy the financial security of the family, I am directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Otis Bowen, to report to me by year end with recommendations on how the private sector and government can work together to address the problems of affordable insurance for those whose life savings would otherwise be threatened when catastrophic illness strikes.

And tonight I want to speak directly to America’s younger generation, because you hold the destiny of our nation in your hands.  With all the temptations young people face, it sometimes seems the allure of the permissive society requires superhuman feats of self-control.  But the call of the future is too strong, the challenge too great to get lost in the blind alleyways of dissolution, drugs, and despair.  Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic achievement.  As they said in the film “Back to the Future,” “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Well, today physicists peering into the infinitely small realms of subatomic particles find reaffirmations of religious faith.  Astronomers build a space telescope that can see to the edge of the universe and possibly back to the moment of creation.  So, yes, this nation remains fully committed to America’s space program.  We’re going forward with our shuttle flights.  We’re going forward to build our space station.  And we are going forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the next decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within 2 hours.  And the same technology transforming our lives can solve the greatest problem of the 20th century.  A security shield can one day render nuclear weapons obsolete and free mankind from the prison of nuclear terror.  America met one historic challenge and went to the Moon.  Now America must meet another:  to make our strategic defense real for all the citizens of planet Earth.

Let us speak of our deepest longing for the future:  to leave our children a land that is free and just and a world at peace.  It is my hope that our fireside summit in Geneva and Mr. Gorbachev’s upcoming visit to America can lead to a more stable relationship.  Surely no people on Earth hate war or love peace more than we Americans.  But we cannot stroll into the future with childlike faith.  Our differences with a system that openly proclaims and practices an alleged right to command people’s