Name: ENGLISH SPEECH | BARACK OBAMA: Ignorance is NOT a Virtue (English Subtitles)
Uploaded: 2020-05-16T13:05:12.000Z
Duration: 31 min 40 s
Description: ddLearn the English Usage: world,economy,graduated,democracy,history,organizing,suggesting,evidence,progress,generation,america,country,climate,political,debate,ignorance,nation,audience...

Point number one: When you hear someone longing for the “good old days,” take it with

We live in a great nation and we are rightly proud of our history.

We are beneficiaries of the labor and the grit and the courage of generations who came

But I guess it's part of human nature, especially in times of change and uncertainty, to want

to look backwards and long for some imaginary past when everything worked, and the economy

hummed, and all politicians were wise, and every child was well-mannered, and America

pretty much did whatever it wanted around the world.

The “good old days” weren't that good.

Yes, there have been some stretches in our history where the economy grew much faster,

There were moments when, immediately after World War II, for example, or the end of the

Cold War, when the world bent more easily to our will.

But those are sporadic, those moments, those episodes.

In fact, by almost every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it

was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago.

And by the way, I'm not — set aside 150 years ago, pre-Civil War — there's a whole

bunch of stuff there we could talk about.

Set aside life in the '50s, when women and people of color were systematically excluded

Since I graduated, in 1983 — which isn't that long ago — I'm just saying.

Since I graduated, crime rates, teenage pregnancy, the share of Americans living in poverty — they're

The share of Americans with college educations have gone way up.

Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks in business and politics.

They're earning more money — although it's long past time that we passed laws

to make sure that women are getting the same pay for the same work as men.

Meanwhile, in the eight years since most of you started high school, we're also better

You and your fellow graduates are entering the job market with better prospects than

Twenty million more Americans know the financial security of health insurance.

We've doubled the production of clean energy.

We have cut the high school dropout rate.

Marriage equality is the law of the land.

And just as America is better, the world is better than when I graduated.

Since I graduated, an Iron Curtain fell, apartheid ended.

We virtually eliminated certain diseases like polio.

We've cut infant mortality by an enormous amount.

Now, I say all these things not to make you complacent.

We've got a bunch of big problems to solve.

But I say it to point out that change has been a constant in our history.

And the reason America is better is because we didn't look backwards we didn't fear

We seized the future and made it our own.

And that's exactly why it's always been young people like you that have brought about

big change — because you don't fear the future.

That leads me to my second point: The world is more interconnected than ever before, and

Look, as President, my first responsibility is always the security and prosperity of the

And as citizens, we all rightly put our country first.

But if the past two decades have taught us anything, it's that the biggest challenges

When overseas states start falling apart, they become breeding grounds for terrorists

and ideologies of nihilism and despair that ultimately can reach our shores.

When developing countries don't have functioning health systems, epidemics like Zika or Ebola

If we want to close loopholes that allow large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid

paying their fair share of taxes, we've got to have the cooperation of other countries

in a global financial system to help enforce financial laws.

The point is, to help ourselves we've got to help others — not pull up the drawbridge

And engagement does not just mean deploying our military.

There are times where we must take military action to protect ourselves and our allies,

and we are in awe of and we are grateful for the men and women who make up the finest fighting

But I worry if we think that the entire burden of our engagement with the world is up to

the 1 percent who serve in our military, and the rest of us can just sit back and do nothing.

And engagement means using all the levers of our national power, and rallying the world

You look at something like trade, for example.

We live in an age of global supply chains, and cargo ships that crisscross oceans, and

online commerce that can render borders obsolete.

And a lot of folks have legitimate concerns with the way globalization has progressed

— that's one of the changes that's been taking place — jobs shipped overseas, trade

deals that sometimes put workers and businesses at a disadvantage.

But the answer isn't to stop trading with other countries.

In this global economy, that's not even possible.

The answer is to do trade the right way, by negotiating with other countries so that they

raise their labor standards and their environmental standards; and we make sure they don't impose

unfair tariffs on American goods or steal American intellectual property.

That's how we make sure that international rules are consistent with our values — including

And ultimately, that's how we help raise wages here in America.

That's how we help our workers compete on a level playing field.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

ENGLISH SPEECH | BARACK OBAMA: Ignorance is NOT a Virtue (English Subtitles)

ultimately

bunch

majority

compromise