The chance to build and own a small business is an essential part of any economy that seeks to establish law and freedom. That is why we want many of you to have economic success. A certain economic self sufficiency is necessary if we are to have some voice in planning our own destiny. This is essential in aworld where governments are always waiting in the wings, all too eager to plan our destiny for us. And, as the bakery example shows, the legal infrastructure in over half the world cannot or will not allow the dream or the hope of owning a small business.
Consider the water crisis in the sub Sahara. You have seen pictures of a stately, dignified woman in a flowing gown with a water jug on her head. That jug weighs more than the luggage allowance at the airport. The hours, the human hours, the toilsome hours, the heart-wrenching, backbreaking hours a woman spends just trying to bring water to the family are staggering.
By cautious estimates, on the African continent alone it takes over sixteen billion hours each year to bring water to the family. That is sixteen billion with a B. But new water systems cannot be built and maintained where corruption holds sway. This is not just because of the lack of money; it is because of the lack of law and property rights.
There are some who say your generation has less power than previous ones because a more interdependent world reduces our power to make unilateral policy choices. In my view this understates your capacity and potential. You are among a new generation of university graduates who see interconnectedness in our world and its universe that far surpasses what previous generations could understand. An interconnected universe is manifest in all fields of learning and endeavors. The earth sciences teach this in a concrete, formal way.
Science, and in particular quantum physics and astrophysics, may soon yield stunning explanations of dark matter and of our common link to the universe. As is evident in the new communications technology, this more interconnected world touches all of our work and culture, over the whole range of the sciences, law and business, and the arts and letters. The new awareness gives you new power. You have a potential to design and to create and todefine and to project your own life and work, a potential far greater than given to your predecessors.
As you think how best to advance the idea of law and the freedom that it secures, please remember that you must understand our own heritage of freedom. This brings us back to the point of beginning. When the Americans rebelled, the world was puzzled. We said we wanted freedom, but it seemed to England and Europe that we were already the freest people the world knew. So we had to act at once to send a fax or an email explaining our case. This was the Declaration of Independence, and then, some eleven years later, came the Constitution of the United States. The result was, and has been this: As Americans we look to the Declaration of Independence, to the Constitution, to our heritage of freedom to define who we are. And let there be no doubt: This dynamic, by which the documents of liberty are part of our self identity, part of our self image, is the envy of oppressed peoples. But this linkage, this connection between the history of freedom and who we are can disappear if we ignore its dynamic force.
So it follows that the Constitution does not belong just to judges and attorneys. It is yours. And with this possession come serious responsibilities. It is not just the President who must preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. All of us must do so. But you cannot preserve what you do not revere; you cannot protect what you have not learned; you cannot defend what you do not know.
If we are conscious of the heritage that defines us we are empowered in a special way. We come to this inevitable conclusion: law and freedom become even more priceless when we give them to others. That is why law and freedom are an ultimate expression of the human spirit. As Americans we know this and, indeed, we have the inward sense that it must be true.
