Clinton, the Johnny Cash of Politics

Here are excerpts from Bill Clinton's speech in Vancouver Friday, collected by Vanessa Richmond who was in the audience.

On being an ex-President

"When I was president, I came to Canada more than any other sitting president in history. I came five times. And since I left office, I've been here 15 times. I have been informed that if I come one more in this calendar year, I will be obliged to pay taxes. And since I live in America where they happen to believe that someone in my income group shouldn't pay taxes, I probably should pay taxes here. Then at least I'll be contributing to the global good somewhere. [Audience laughs]. I get in trouble when I speak. But then that's the good thing about being an ex-president, you can say what you want to."

On US/Canada relations

"Let's start with the US-Canada relations. When I come up here, the media always says to me 'Well, you came here five times, you had a wonderful relationship with us, and now we've got these terrible rifts between the US and Canada. We had a terrible fight over softwood lumber, and you know there are some gratuitously anti-American comments made when we didn't agree with your gov'ts decision to invade Iraq. And does this mean everything is terrible and fundamentally changed?' And I always say something like this. 'We have the largest undefended border in the world. We have a dispute over softwood lumber and durum wheat. And the most interesting one was over salmon because it was a product of global warming…If that's all there is to fight about, we're doing pretty well.'"

On the Canadian role in Afghanistan

"I want to thank you for a controversial decision but one that I think is very important. And I know you have had deaths and injuries just in the last week. I just want to remind you that after 9/11, the entire world, the entire UN supported the united effort to go in and overthrow the Taliban which was the most repressive regime on the face of the earth for women and young girls. And which provided aid and comfort and shelter and abject protection to the Al Qaeda."

On the main values for the twenty-first century

"Our main job for those of us who live in successful countries is to build up the positive forces of interdependence and beating down the negative ones: to move from an unstable, even if exciting, interdependence to more integrated communities that are more stable and more fair and more just. What's the difference between an interdependent community and an integrated environment? The only characteristic of interdependence is that you can't escape each other, divorce is not an option. An integrated community has equal opportunities, shared responsibility and common values. So that people don't want to divorce, they want to live together and work…So the question is, in this incredibly diverse world, is there any way we could create those things? And my answer is maybe not perfectly, but we could do a lot better that we are. And everyone knows that what's important in life is that you're moving in the right direction. No one expects perfection on this earth."

On security

"How do we move from an interdependent to an integrated community? There are four things. The first is that we need to have a security policy. We need to fight terrorism to contain the weapons of mass destruction and the materials you need to make them.

"As part of security, we need to look at health. The biggest threat we face today is avian flu…Because we are going to be travelling all the time, this is going to be a problem we face over and over and over again….Globalization means we're going to be bumping up against each other from now on and the danger of global epidemics will increase.

"The other big security issue we face is climate change: arguably the most remote and clearly the most serious. Terrorism has never deposed any other country alone. Fanaticism is not gong to take away the progress of science in the modern world, whatever gains it makes. But we are only 15,000 years from the last ice age on a planet that is billions of years old…Now, 9 of the 10 hottest years ever recorded happened in the last decade…Global warming is a security issue and an economic issue. Don't let anyone tell you only tree huggers like me care about it. We have to learn to produce more output with less greenhouse gas output.

"We cannot build the world we want only with a security system. Why? For the same reason that someone can't run for premier of BC on just planning to eliminate crime. That's why security alone is an insufficient response to developing countries. That's why politics comes in. We need more partnerships and fewer terrorists. It turns out it's good politics to be a good neighbour.

"So for a fraction of what it takes to fight militarily in Iraq or Afghanistan, both our countries do our part to combat AIDS and malaria and help the hundreds of thousands of kids who never go to school to get access to decent learning materials..You cannot spend too much money to do that."

On the value of international aid

"When former President Bush and I were asked by the current President to go raise money for the tsunami…the day before I had to give the report to the White House, I got the following poll. In Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world, they were really mad at us. And America's approval rating was 28%. And Mr. Bin Ladin's approval rating was 58%. A few months later, when the Indonesians were asked why they changed their opinion so dramatically, they only had one answer: that we were there for them. We showed up. And related to them as people. And guess what, it turned out to be good politics to be a good neighbour to be a good person. And a year later, just last week another survey came out and the gains had been permanent. And we now have a chance to do the same thing in Pakistan near the Kashmir border where that terrible earthquake occurred. You can agree or disagree but the evidence is on my side. For less money you can do the humane thing, make a world with more partners and fewer terrorists, build our numbers and shrink the numbers of the people who are trying to hurt us."

On the homefront

"We have to keep making things better at home. If we want to make the world a model of democracy, diversity, social justice and economic success, then we have to keep getting better at home. People are not very good at listening to advice of people who don't take it themselves."

On how to develop common values

"We have to develop these common values. You may think that's impossible, but I don't. The Greeks and the Turks would always fight over Cypress, but they'd have earthquakes and they'd go and help each other.

"When you reach out and make connections, then you see what our common values are: every person has dignity and deserves the right to live his or her dreams, one. Two, competition is fine but cooperation is more important.

"And three, our differences really do matter. They make life more interesting, they enable us to honestly search, debate and argue for the truth. But in the end, our common humanity matters more. This is the central challenge facing us.

"The central heresy of any religion is to claim that you are in possession of the absolute truth and you have turned it into a political program which is absolutely true. All religions believe there is a truth, but all teach humility in pursuit of it. Not just Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but Buddhism, Confucianism, the way of the Sikhs, and the Jaines. They all teach the same thing. Yes, there is a truth but you don't have it. And the way to live a meaningful life is to get on the road and search for it. For all these people who claim to be murdering people in the name of God have committed a heresy…Humility is the order of the day here."

On the power of the private citizen

"You have more power to deal with all these issues that I have talked about today as private citizens than any group of private citizen in history and you have a greater responsibility to do it. It may be done here at home in your neighbourhood, your city, your nation, or with some, charitable or religious or other group somewhere around the world. But remember, we live in an interdependent world. We learned 100 years ago that the free market is the best allocator of goods and services and generator of growth, but also produces unacceptable social inequalities and leaves some problems totally alone like the environment unless moderated by a caring government.

"We also have learned that even if the people we vote for do everything we believed, and even if our economy is operating at peak speed, there will be gaps that politicians, despite all their work, cannot solve. That's where the non-governmental sector comes in or private citizens doing public good. You have to know you don't have to be rich. Thirty percent of Americans gave money to the tsunami, over half over the Internet. If you just care about something desperately and all you have is $25 to give and you look around and find something you think another 5,000 or 15,000 people care about, to the tune of $25, all of sudden you've got enough money to change the nature of the issue."

"…I still grieve about the people I could have saved in Rwanda but I didn't. I'm not preaching to you from a point of arrogance. I've saved lives and I have let people go that I could have saved. You don't have to be perfect, but you have to play. In an era of global citizenship, sitting on the bench is not an option. Walking away is not an option. And you can't get a divorce. So wake up everyday and think about that."