2009 Commencement Address
            Junior State Summer School at Georgetown

It's a great honor to be chosen to give your faculty commencement
address, and, as the Congressman said, I am filled with humidity.
You don't know about this, but the struggle among the faculty to
avoid this particular honor is extremely intense. This is only the
third time in my sixteen summer school years that I have lost the
competition (and I only lost last year because Elizabeth pulled my 
name out of a hat)(and I still think that was rigged). However,
given how old I'm getting and the fact that I've already had several
bouts with cancer, I actually volunteered this year - sort of.

While I seem to be in excellent health now, partly due to my sensible
fishy-vegan diet, my regular exercise in the lap pool, and my happy 
life, I am more aware than most that life is a finite thing and there
are no guarantees. Most people who have had life-threatening illnesses
will tell you that the experience changes your outlook. You have a new 
focus on what's important and what you want to do in the months and -
you hope - years left to you.

You might ask then why in the world, if my time is limited, would I want
to spend seven weeks teaching high school students in the Junior State
Summer School at Georgetown. Is it the food? No. The chance to sleep on
concrete mattresses? No. The opportunity to see rats frolicking in 
their natural environment? No. The lovely Walsh classroom building with
its classrooms that alternate between being pressure cookers and ice
boxes and stairwells that haven't been painted since the Roosevelt 
administration? No. 

The main reason I come is the opportunity to interact with the wonderful
students who come here each year, choosing to spend three weeks of what
is supposed to be their summer vacation taking a full college level 
course, engaging in endless hours of debate, and travelling all over the
Washington metropolitan area. You strange, eccentric, smart (and often
smart ass) kids who for some reason or other have developed an inordinate
interest in politics and want to hang out with other people like your-
selves - and are thrilled to find out there ARE other people like your-
selves.

I come back every year, as most of us on this stage do, to work with 
you, to help you, to let you know it's okay to have your weird political 
affliction, and to encourage you to spend not just a few weeks in the 
summer but the rest of your lives taking seriously the responsibility 
of citizenship. That means following the example of James Madison - 
and you can find no better role model - studying, thinking about, and
discussing political ideas and events, voting, contacting your elected -
and appointed - officials, getting involved in political campaigns, 
lobbying and working for things you believe in, and for many of you, 
running for elected office.

I sometimes think you can learn all you need to know just by studying
Madison. When you go home Google James Madison quotes and see what 
you get. Here are some examples:

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of 
the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than
by violent and sudden usurpations."

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise
of fighting a foreign enemy."

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be 
charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from
abroad."

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be
their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge
gives."

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps the most to be
dreaded."

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of 
true liberty."

"The essence of Government is power, and power, lodged as it must be
in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

"The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question whether
there is or is not cause for declaring war."

"The means of defense againt foreign danger historically have been the 
instruments of tyranny at home."

"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."

"A well instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."

Your generation faces enormous challenges, perhaps the greatest any 
generation has faced: a political system tainted and in some cases
completely corrupted by the huge amounts of money it takes to run 
for public office; the greatest economic crisis since the Great 
Depression and skyrocketing budget deficits and national debt; and 
an environment in so much trouble that the very survival of the planet
may be at stake.

This nation has faced great challenges before: the Revolutionary War; 
the War of 1812; the Civil War; the Great Depression; World Wars I and 
II; the Cold War.  We have survived these challenges because of the
strength of our people and institutions, the courage and daring of
our leaders, and the resources of our immense and wonderful land. We
have answered positively the question that so concerned our founders
whether people living in free society are capable of governing them-
selves. We have succeeded so far in providing a solution to the great
challenge recognized by Madison in Federalist 51: how to give the
government enough power to control the governed and at the same time
oblige it to control itself. 

Just as there are no guarantees in life, however, there are no guaran-
tees that our system will go on ad infinitum. As Benjamin Franklin 
left the constitutional convention on the last day a woman called
out to him, "What do we have, Dr. Franklin, a democracy or a repub-
lic?" "A republic," he replied, "If you can keep it." Whether we can
keep it remains to be seen. To a very great extent the answer will 
depend on your generation. That is why I come back each year to 
Junior State at Georgetown. I want to make sure that you are aware 
that whether we can keep our republic and our precious civil rights 
and liberties depends on all of you and to encourage you to prepare
yourselves for the task ahead - something you are already doing. 
Being the age I am, I will not live to see whether you succeed, but
the time that I have spent with you and your predecessors these last
sixteen summers, meeting with you, working with you in what seem to 
you at times like endless hours of class, seeing you debate, in what 
seeme to me at times like endless hours of Congressional workshop
debate, makes me more hopeful about the future of this country and 
the world community as a whole, more confident tht your generation 
WILL be able to rise to its great challenges.

So congratulations on your graduation, thank you for coming here to
our summer school, and thanks to the parents and friends - and the
faculty and staff - who made it possible. Now go forth and do good 
things, remembering Bobby Kennedy's statement, borrowed from George 
Bernard Shaw, "Some see things as they are and ask why; others dream
things that never were and ask why not?" and, most importantly for 
you at this early stage of your life, Johann Goethe's encouraging
words: "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it."