Word: thingness
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This is really kind of a new thing. And the argument that I'm going to try to make is that this is a new kind of service, a new kind of civic engagement; that people are becoming kind of citizen consumers, and that is related to this idea of service. The President: Well, I think you especially see that in the next generation, even among our daughters. I remember Malia maybe three years ago - she was eight or seven - said, you've got to get a hybrid because this is polluting the air and killing polar bears...
...will be like 10, 20 or 30 years from now. I wonder if you could talk about this idea of is there kind of a new social contract that this group of Americans or Americans as a whole are embracing. The President: Well, I think this is a positive thing, and it speaks to something we've tried to express during the campaign - Washington hasn't quite caught up to it yet - and that is that a traditional argument was between those who thought government could do everything and those who thought government shouldn't do anything. And even...
...core functions that have to be dealt with. We're in the midst of a health care debate right now, and there was a story a couple of weeks back about the free health care that was provided on an annual basis in California, but they do the same thing in Virginia, where doctors and nurses all gather for three or four days; anybody can come and get health care, and there were just thousands of people showing up. That can't be sort of an efficient, effective way for us to make sure that people have the care that...
...kind of choices, the consumer choices that they make. The President: Well, as I said, the - I do think that young people - this next generation is much more aware of the consequences of what they buy, what they use, what they drive. And that's a wonderful thing. And our - all our individual choices, when you aggregate them, end up having a huge effect. And I think that this generation understands that more than our generation did and our parents' generation...
Service does that. It puts you in a set of conversations with people that you otherwise wouldn't talk to. One of the things that I loved most about the campaign was going to Iowa and going door to door and sitting at people's kitchens talking to them in small settings about life and sharing dreams and our stories. That's what service does. It's, you know, that's the indirect but very important outcome of community service is that it forces us out of our comfort zones and into one another's lives in a series...