Rep. Lloyd Doggett

Commencement Address at Texas State University, San Marcos

December 15, 2007

It’s a great day. Congratulations to each graduate, to those here who provided the encouragement and support -- who fill these stands to the rafters, to the distinguished faculty, and to the Administration of Texas State University on another achievement.

Commencement speakers often offer advice about the qualities and skills needed for success. But given what you have accomplished to get here today, it looks to me like you have already charted a successful course. Instead of giving you advice, let me seek it. And let me urge you to continue giving your advice so that together we can successfully deal with certain major challenges of our day.

You have benefited from the scholarship here on this beautiful campus, deep in the heart of Texas, learning at an institution that is an important part of meeting these challenges. Now, strengthened by the investment made in you by this institution, your family and friends, and the investment that you have made in yourselves, it is your time to assume more personal responsibility for helping to resolve these problems.

I am telling you in advance that I will be discussing three challenges so you can do a countdown in your head, calculating just how much closer you will be to your graduation parties.

Engaging the World

First, I will discuss how we as Americans engage the rest of the world. I believe that your engagement has already begun with the international students, who have come to Texas State. We call it Texas State, but it really could be called “Texas International.” Today, we have successful graduates from around the world--Azerbaijan to Thailand, from China, India, Japan, Mexico and many others. As far as I am concerned, American higher education is the very best export our country offers—it conveys essential values about what America represents, our respect for diversity and disagreement, and our commitment to encouraging each individual to achieve his or her full individual potential.

But our engagement with the world means that we Americans must learn as well as teach. I believe that those same international students can give us greater insight into their native lands, just as those whose parents may have been born elsewhere but have built their homes and businesses here can offer bridges of understanding to other parts of the world.

And with so much international goodwill that America enjoyed after 9/11 having been squandered, we could use some bridges. A recent 47-nation Pew poll found global public opinion increasingly wary of the United States. This survey revealed that “Over the last five years, America’s image has plummeted throughout much of the world, including sharp drops in favorability among traditional allies . . . .” And in many other places, America’s standing is in the single digits.

We need to ask ourselves, “Why?” That is a question that my granddaughter cannot stop asking “Why? Why? Why?” Well, don’t stop now, just because you are no longer a toddler or a student. It is never unpatriotic to ask “why.”

Just as the Renaissance brought about the process of investigating nature with our own senses, so too should you continue to question authority with your own mind, rejecting the glib answers we so often hear.

Of course, internationally, we must continue to have a strong military, and, where necessary, we must be willing to apply military force. I particularly salute those graduates, who are veterans or who are serving now, who -- like those accompanying me here last month in our San Marcos Veterans day parade -- put their lives on the line for our security.

And we must continue to expand initiatives like the Texas State ALERRT Center, which trains police officers, school administrators, members of the National Guard, and your fellow Criminal Justice students about preventing and containing violence wherever and from whatever it occurs.

When I was a young boy, watching two television shows was almost a family ritual. One was “Gunsmoke” and the other, was named for a card its hero carried --“Have Gun, Will Travel.” I saw those programs weekly in black and white, and they were pretty black and white—good guys taming the frontier by reining in various bad guys. These villains left little room for nuance. The two-dimensional characters in these programs were either “for us or against us,” to borrow a phrase from our President. Today, though, in a high definition television world, I don’t believe that old black and white version works too well.

Surely, if we have learned anything from the tragedy that is Iraq, it is that military might, no matter how great, lacks the power to achieve some of our most important objectives. And when that military might is projected on essentially a go-it-alone basis, Americans do much of the dying and most all of the paying.

In Iraq, in addition to the blood of the brave, that price tag is $3 billion dollars every single week, week after week, month after month. That’s a lot, but what does it mean? We all have a friend or relative who has battled cancer. Well, take all the money we are spending to try to cure it through the National Cancer Institute—that is how much money we spend in Iraq in two weeks. Put another way, what we spend in one week in Iraq would fund the Pell Grants for a year of college for 1.2 million more students.

Basic principles of law and order have applicability among nations, just as they do among citizens in a small town. In this dangerous world, sometimes it is necessary to flash that card “have gun, will travel,” and hit the road, but overdependence upon packing the biggest gun and having the fastest draw with a first strike sets a pattern for other nations to seek safety the same way, like by building a nuclear bomb, and can create a formula for international anarchy.

True security means working together with nations, large and small. It means that we must be wise enough to rely on America’s other strengths to rid the world of dangers rather than unilaterally imposing our will by force in circumstances that both unite our enemies and divide our natural allies.

America needs your education and effort to help build a peace that keeps our families truly secure.

Meeting the Global Warming Challenge

While terrorism remains an immediate concern, “climate change” or “global warming” represents one of our most significant long-term security challenges. Doing as little about this critical issue in the next seven years as we have done in the last seven will mean that the polar bear is far from the only endangered species.

On Monday, Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change accepted a Nobel Peace Prize for their important work on this growing threat. As Gore warned in his acceptance speech: “The earth has a fever and the fever is rising.” Although you may have already begun to forget how to conjugate an irregular verb in the pluperfect tense or how to integrate using trigonometric substitutions – you probably will not forget tubing down the San Marcos River and the crystal-clear springs and stately cypress at the river’s headwaters. We cannot let such treasures succumb to the threat of global warming.

With the Texas State River Systems Institute and Edwards Aquifer Center, this campus is already one of the best places in the world to study aquatic ecosystems and species. Here is the place to plan for the impact of increasing global temperatures that will lead to droughts and water scarcity, causing a decrease in the quality of water and increased conflicts over water allocation. Climate change that without a significant reduction in pollution will submerge Galveston and Padre Island and make other significant changes in the Texas coastline.

When it comes to greenhouse gases, our country is the world’s leading polluter, and our State is our country’s leading polluter. If we are to avoid catastrophe, we need to begin here and now. We have the potential to find job-producing technologies that will respond to this challenge.

America needs your education and energy. The science is clear; it is the will for action to respond to that science which is lacking. That is a place where each of you can help make a difference.

Meeting the Healthcare Challenge

As important as a healthy planet and a secure nation are, ensuring your own health is proving for many to be a more immediate challenge. Too many of our neighbors, and, statistically, many of you here, confront struggles obtaining affordable, quality medical care. Here at Texas State, the College of Health Professions and the Health Resource Center are doing important work. In Texas, we have the world’s top medical science, but we also have the most expensive and one of the most deficient ways of accessing that science anywhere. Texas has the dubious distinction of having a greater proportion of our children with no health insurance than anywhere in the country. A healthy body, like an educated mind, is an opportunity in which all Americans should be permitted to share.

While it’s wonderful that we have top notch healthcare technology here in Texas, it might as well be located on the moon for the many who cannot access it--the children of the working poor, those who sob with an earache, moan with an abscessed tooth, or lack antibiotics for strep throat. It is no consolation to the woman who has been diagnosed with cancer, but now worries she cannot cover the cost of effective treatment. Not having access to care is the difference between life and death. As one expert noted, “A woman without health insurance who gets a breast cancer diagnosis is at least 40 percent more likely to die.”

We need a healthcare system that permits every single one of you to pursue your hopes and dreams without worrying – will this job provide healthcare? Will I be able to find insurance if I pursue my dream of starting my own business? Can I become an artist or a musician, or chart a new career path and still obtain the healthcare I need?”

We should help build an America that recognizes that we all have a stake in healthy and productive citizens--where the daughter of a doctor and a daughter of teacher, soldier, or even a liberal arts major, have equal access to life-saving medicine.

Conclusion

As you transition from the dorm room to the board room, from your leadership on campus to becoming leaders in your community, or perhaps from this hilly campus to Capitol Hill, know that it is not about being somebody, but it is about doing something.

How can you make a difference? Continue to educate yourself about the issues. Join with others who share your concern. Together you are stronger and have a more powerful voice. More than just Facebook, spread the word face-to-face through your friends and relatives. We have many future teachers here—teach your class first, but also teach your community. Making a difference doesn’t mean “going along to get along.” It means getting it right.

Whether you are graduating with high honors, or honored to be graduating, you will honor this institution’s long line of distinguished graduates when you join them in giving back to our community.

I remain hopeful about America, hopeful about our ability to overcome these challenges because I am hopeful about you, that you have learned, that you care, that you will make a difference.

Your role does not have to be as large as this institution’s most famous alumnus, President Lyndon Johnson, to make a big difference. In remarks to college students working for the government in the summer of 1965, President Johnson said that “the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. And we aim to get it.”

Go now, give back, and be that change.

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