a grain of salt.

Take it with a grain of salt.

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

before.

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.

Guess what.

It ain't so.

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

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

or when government ran more smoothly.

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

from big chunks of American life.

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

all down.

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

Our life expectancy has, as well.

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

More women are in the workforce.

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

off.

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

any time since 2007.

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

We're less dependent on foreign oil.

We've doubled the production of clean energy.

We have cut the high school dropout rate.

We've cut the deficit by two-thirds.

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.

There's more democracy.

We virtually eliminated certain diseases like polio.

We've cut extreme poverty drastically.

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

the future.

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

it's becoming more connected every day.

Building walls won't change that.

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

United States.

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

we face cannot be solved in isolation.

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

can spread and threaten Americans, too.

And a wall won't stop that.

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 try to keep the world out.

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

force the world has ever known.

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.

They can't shoulder the entire burden.

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

to take on our shared challenges.

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

human rights.

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.

Building walls won't do that.

It won't boost our economy, and it won't enhance our security either.

Isolating or disparaging Muslims, suggesting that they should be treated differently when

it comes to entering this country — that is not just a betrayal of our values — that's

not just a betrayal of who we are, it would alienate the very communities at home and

abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.

Suggesting that we can build an endless wall along our borders, and blame our challenges

on immigrants — that doesn't just run counter to our history as the world's melting

pot; it contradicts the evidence that our growth and our innovation and our dynamism

has always been spurred by our ability to attract strivers from every corner of the

globe.

That's how we became America.

Why would we want to stop it now?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Four more years!

Can't do it.

Which brings me to my third point: Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding

of science — these are good things.

These are qualities you want in people making policy.

These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens.

That might seem obvious.

That's why we honor Bill Moyers or Dr. Burnell.

We traditionally have valued those things.

But if you were listening to today's political debate, you might wonder where this strain

of anti-intellectualism came from.

So, Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be.

In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue.

It's not cool to not know what you're talking about.

That's not keeping it real, or telling it like it is.

That's not challenging political correctness.

That's just not knowing what you're talking about.

And yet, we've become confused about this.

Look, our nation's Founders — Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson — they were

born of the Enlightenment.

They sought to escape superstition, and sectarianism, and tribalism, and no-nothingness.

They believed in rational thought and experimentation, and the capacity of informed citizens to master

our own fates.

That is embedded in our constitutional design.

That spirit informed our inventors and our explorers, the Edisons and the Wright Brothers,

and the George Washington Carvers and the Grace Hoppers, and the Norman Borlaugs and

the Steve Jobses.

That's what built this country.

And today, in every phone in one of your pockets — we have access to more information than

at any time in human history, at a touch of a button.

But, ironically, the flood of information hasn't made us more discerning of the truth.

In some ways, it's just made us more confident in our ignorance.

We assume whatever is on the web must be true.

We search for sites that just reinforce our own predispositions.

Opinions masquerade as facts.

The wildest conspiracy theories are taken for gospel.

Now, understand, I am sure you've learned during your years of college — and if not,

you will learn soon — that there are a whole lot of folks who are book smart and have no

common sense.

That's the truth.

You'll meet them if you haven't already.

So the fact that they've got a fancy degree — you got to talk to them to see whether

they know what they're talking about.

Qualities like kindness and compassion, honesty, hard work — they often matter more than

technical skills or know-how.

But when our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they're not held accountable

for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, while actual experts are dismissed as

elitists, then we've got a problem.

You know, it's interesting that if we get sick, we actually want to make sure the doctors

have gone to medical school, they know what they're talking about.

If we get on a plane, we say we really want a pilot to be able to pilot the plane.

And yet, in our public lives, we certainly think, “I don't want somebody who's

done it before.”

The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science — that is the path to decline.

It calls to mind the words of Carl Sagan, who graduated high school here in New Jersey

— he said: “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths

of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”

The debate around climate change is a perfect example of this.

Now, I recognize it doesn't feel like the planet is warmer right now.

I understand.

There was hail when I landed in Newark.

But think about the climate change issue.

Every day, there are officials in high office with responsibilities who mock the overwhelming

consensus of the world's scientists that human activities and the release of carbon

dioxide and methane and other substances are altering our climate in profound and dangerous

ways.

A while back, you may have seen a United States senator trotted out a snowball during a floor

speech in the middle of winter as “proof” that the world was not warming.

I mean, listen, climate change is not something subject to political spin.

There is evidence.

There are facts.

We can see it happening right now.

If we don't act, if we don't follow through on the progress we made in Paris, the progress

we've been making here at home, your generation will feel the brunt of this catastrophe.

So it's up to you to insist upon and shape an informed debate.

Imagine if Benjamin Franklin had seen that senator with the snowball, what he would think.

Imagine if your 5th grade science teacher had seen that.

He'd get a D. And he's a senator!

Look, I'm not suggesting that cold analysis and hard data are ultimately more important

in life than passion, or faith, or love, or loyalty.

I am suggesting that those highest expressions of our humanity can only flourish when our

economy functions well, and proposed budgets add up, and our environment is protected.

And to accomplish those things, to make collective decisions on behalf of a common good, we have

to use our heads.

We have to agree that facts and evidence matter.

And we got to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable to know what the heck they're

talking about.

All right.

I only have two more points.

I know it's getting cold and you guys have to graduate.

Point four: Have faith in democracy.

Look, I know it's not always pretty.

Really, I know.

I've been living it.

But it's how, bit by bit, generation by generation, we have made progress in this

nation.

That's how we banned child labor.

That's how we cleaned up our air and our water.

That's how we passed programs like Social Security and Medicare that lifted millions

of seniors out of poverty.

None of these changes happened overnight.

They didn't happen because some charismatic leader got everybody suddenly to agree on

everything.

It didn't happen because some massive political revolution occurred.

It actually happened over the course of years of advocacy, and organizing, and alliance-building,

and deal-making, and the changing of public opinion.

It happened because ordinary Americans who cared participated in the political process.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Because of you!

Well, that's nice.

I mean, I helped, but — Look, if you want to change this country for

the better, you better start participating.

I'll give you an example on a lot of people's minds right now — and that's the growing

inequality in our economy.

Over much of the last century, we've unleashed the strongest economic engine the world has

ever seen, but over the past few decades, our economy has become more and more unequal.

The top 10 percent of earners now take in half of all income in the U.S.

In the past, it used to be a top CEO made 20 or 30 times the income of the average worker.

Today, it's 300 times more.

And wages aren't rising fast enough for millions of hardworking families.

Now, if we want to reverse those trends, there are a bunch of policies that would make a

real difference.

We can raise the minimum wage.

We can modernize our infrastructure.