We need to clean up the water in which our children are swimming. We need to keep pornography from coming up on kid's computers, and we need to keep drugs off the streets. We need less violence and sex on TV when kids are watching and in movies and video games that are marketed to young people. If we get serious about this, we can do a great deal more to clean the water in which our children swim.
Cleaning "the ocean in which our children swim" begins with ensuring that we have strong families. The most important work being done to strengthen America's future is the work that is being done within the four walls of the American home. Children need the guiding hand of responsible parents. As a child swims through our increasingly polluted and turbulent waters, there is no help more sure than that of a loving mother and father. Every child deserves a mother and a father.
At these times, many people feel pessimistic about the future. The new generation of challenges is daunting. Evil confronts freedom on far-flung battlefields, and our children must navigate troubled waters at home. Early in our country's history, Abigail Adams wrote to her son when he was concerned about the future of our democracy that "great necessities call out great virtues." It is the same today. I see these virtues in the American people as I travel across the country. I have seen them throughout my life.
If we are to confront evil, we must strengthen the American people and ensure that our children grow up in strong families. America is a nation of stature thanks to the great and noble men and women serving our country here and abroad. It is why we know that America will rise to face today's challenges. It is why we can be confident that, in the words of one great American, this nation will always remain a "shining city upon a hill."