For The Defense, December 2011 - DRI Today

Embracing Our
Common Humanity—
President Clinton
Headlines 2011 DRI
Annual Meeting
“We have something very, very
special for everybody,” announced then
DRI President- Elect Henry M. Sneath to
a packed ballroom, as he introduced this
year’s featured Annual Meeting speaker.
He was right. DRI was honored to welcome
Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the
United States, to the blockbuster stage,
where he delivered a sobering yet hopeful
message to Annual Meeting attendees
and their guests on “Embracing Our
Common Humanity.”
In opening his address, President Clinton
said that people often ask him about
the nation’s potential long-term decline
and whether we have started to see the
beginning of the end of America. “A lot
of people are betting against us,” he said,
“but I wouldn’t do it if I were you.” The
president went on to explain why he felt
that way and discussed, in the context of
the world today, several of the important
problems faced by the country.
8 ■ For The Defense ■ December 2011
First, however, President Clinton
offered the audience some positives. The
president said that scientific research
represents one example of how the world
cooperates in some remarkable ways.
He pointed to recent discoveries such as
planets outside of our solar system, new
information about our hominid ancestors,
and recent developments in particle
physics that may, in our lifetimes, upend
everything that we think that we know
about space and time. He said that cooperation
is also what we need to achieve
the goals of solving economic problems
and ameliorating bad social conditions.
“In the world we live in,” said President
Clinton, “we’ve learned one thing:
that the most important characteristic
of the twenty-first century is our interdependence.”
Interdependence, he said,
can be good or bad, and the president
told attendees that he organizes his life
around a principle that involves build-
ing up the positive, while reducing the
negative, forces of our interdependence.
In discussing the massive problems
facing our country and the world today,
President Clinton devoted significant
time to the issue of inequality, which he
said is far too pervasive to hold societies
together and keep people working cooperatively.
He talked about how social
challenges—whether stemming from
economic strife, education shortcomings,
climate change-driven disasters, or
disease—present themselves very differently
in poor countries than in wealthy
countries. Poor countries lack systems,
the kind of systems that provide many of
the things that we in this country probably
take for granted. For example, the
reason that Haiti experienced a cholera
outbreak was that it lacked a sanitation
system. Inadequate health care
systems in poor countries have fueled
the spread of AIDS. Poor countries are