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MOUNT MADONNA
SCHOOL
Interview with
Congressman Barney Frank
4th District of
Massachusetts
May 24th, 2000
Mira Vissell: Can you say how it was that
you chose a life in the public service?
Cong. Frank: I remember when I was in my early
teens being interested in politics. My father was
what we now call an early adapter, and when new gimmicks
came out he would by one. So he got a television set
very early, in 1940. There weren't many programs.
Most people didn't get TV sets until the fifties.
As a result, when I was growing up I saw televised
some very important political events. There were hearings
held by Kefuaver, a senator from Tennessee about crime,
and there were McCarthy Hearings in the mid-fifties.
I just felt myself fascinated by it, but I really
don't understand why. You never know why some things
interest you and not others, but I was interested
in politics.
When I went to college in September
of 1957, it was my first real opportunity to get involved
in political activity. I was active with the Young Democrats
and various student government organizations. I decided
then that much of what I wanted to do was to be involved
politically, but I never thought that I would run for
office. At the time, there were two obstacles I thought,
to my ever running for office. One is that I'm Jewish.
While that is no longer the case, forty years ago anti-Semitism
was still a pretty significant factor in America. That,
I'm pleased to say, has pretty much collapsed. In 1960,
if someone had said, "Hey I have a great idea; let's
have two Jewish women be the Senators from California,"
people would have thought it was totally ridiculous.
So that was one factor. The other is that I'm gay,
although I concealed that for some time. I grew up at
a time when there was a very famous movie based on a
very famous book called Advise and Consent about politics
in the United States Senate. In the plot there's a promising
young Senator, Mr. Rucock, who has a very great career
ahead of him. Then it is discovered that he had a homosexual
experience when he went into the Army, in World War
II. When an incriminating photograph shows up, he then
does the only logical thing that in the late fifties,
early sixties, a politician could do in that circumstance
- he kills himself. In the book, he goes into the United
States Senate, into his office on a Saturday afternoon,
and pulls the trigger. So I read about this, and figured,
"well, a political career is probably not a good thing
to do." (Laughter) So I decided that I would be a professor,
an academic, and I would be active in politics. Maybe
I'd work for the politicians, and be active in campaigns,
but I didn't think I could ever be a full-timer. I
went to graduate school, and I enjoyed some parts of
it, but I didn't really have the discipline to write
a thesis. In 1968, a man named Kevin White was running
for Mayor of Boston and I went to work for him. He and
I got along well, and at the end of that campaign he
said, "why don't you come work for me?" So I left graduate
school and went to work for him. After three years,
I went back to graduate school to finish my thesis.
I realized then, that I'd had experience doing both,
but I enjoyed the political world more. I still didn't
think that I could ever run for office, but I figured,
okay, I was deeply closeted, I wasn't going to tell
anybody that I was gay, so I could hide being gay and
go off to work in politics. I went to work for a Congressman
here, after three years with the Mayor. Then in 1972,
a State Representative in the district in downtown Boston,
where I had been living, retired. He was a Republican;
it had been a Republican area. However, it was 1972,
the first year of the 18-year-old vote, and during the
Viet Nam war. Some friends said that I'd gotten to be
fairly well-known, because I'd worked for the Mayor,
and they said, "Why don't you go up for the State Legislature?"
I said, "okay, I think I will," because it was an unusual
district. It was downtown, a sophisticated, urban area.
The fact that I was thirty-two and unmarried just wasn't
going to be a problem. So I went into the legislature.
The Congressman from the district next to mine
was a Jesuit priest. His name is Robert Joyner. When
Pope John Paul II took over as Pope, he announced that
he didn't want any priests in elected office. So the
Pope ordered Joyner not to run again and I ran instead.
I sort of figured, "well, what have you got to lose?
We'll see what happens." I won narrowly and stayed in.
So that's how it evolved. I first became interested
in politics, and then gradually it seemed to me that
I had more of a chance to do things than I'd thought. Father Joyner has said that if he ever ran into the
Pope, if he ever met him, he would say to the Pope,
"so you happy now with him instead of me?" (Laughter)
Kyle Felder: In your ten terms as a representative,
what have been the biggest changes you have seen in
the Congress?
Cong. Frank: Well obviously, the single biggest
was the Republicans takeover in 1995. It's very different
to be in the minority than to be in the majority.
There are also very big ideological differences. During
my first years, we were trying to improve, from our
standpoint, government programs, but now we've been
more on the defensive. So that's the single biggest
change. The other is that it has become more partisan
which was directly the result of Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich, when he was a young
Republican, specifically said, and he wrote this down
so it's not controversial whether he said it or not,
"it's a mistake for Republicans to treat the Democrats
as honorable opponents; they're the enemy, they're corrupt,
they're not loyal Americans." He really introduced a
very angry element and succeeded at first. In politics,
as in other works of life, success breeds imitation.
When people see that something works, they do it. So
politics has gotten a lot angrier since that time. In
my personal life, in 1987, after my fourth election,
I decided to publicly come out. That's been an enormous
plus for me, not to have to put up with all the nonsense
and subterfuge. However in Congress, the change is the
anger that Gingrich introduced and then the fact that
they've taken over.
Jesse Bazarnick: Politics in America noted
your penchant for trying to match liberalism with
hard-nosed pragmatism in order to move the legislative
ball. What is the key to being able to get things
done here in Congress?
Cong. Frank: I'm writing an article right
now for a magazine called The American Trust Faire,
which is a very good magazine from a liberal perspective.
They said, "do liberals need radicals? Do liberals
need people on the left?" I'm right in the middle,
and I said, "yeah, because there are two parts of
my job." These are for anyone who is trying to affect
public policy. One is at any given time when you have
to make a choice, to make the choice that best suits
your values. However, you also have to work in such
a way that the next time you have to make a choice,
you've created a better set of choices. Somebody once
said, "it's okay to choose the lesser evil as long
as you remember that you've chosen evil." So you do
the best you can, but then you try to do better the
next time. I try to keep both of those in mind. I
think people tend to focus on one or the other.
The other part is personal.
I work hard at this job. I understand how legislating
works, and I try to know who my colleagues are, how
they act, and how to motivate them. Being effective
in a legislative body is kind of like trying to be popular
in high school. You want to show you know what you're
doing, but you don't want to seem too self-satisfied
about it. You want to be good at it, but you don't want
to be self-congratulatory. It's an interesting thing
about legislators; we are all equal. In most situations,
it's a hierarchy where there's a boss and people who
give each other orders. There are 435 members in the
house. Nobody can give anybody else an order. Nobody
can fire anybody else. The only people who can fire
me are 600,000 constituents who are four hundred miles
away from here. So no matter how much everybody else
doesn't like me, there's nothing they can do about it.
On the other hand, then I can't get anything accomplished.
In fact there's an article in the New York Times today
about the fact that some of us who are very different
in our ideologies are working together. I'm quoted as
saying, "If you can't work with people you despise,
then you can't function here." That's what I try to
do is to understand the mechanics of the place and work
at it. The hard job is to do the best you can
in a given situation while at the same time realizing
it's your job to make the situation better. You are
trying to fly the plane and redesign it at the same
time, and that's hard.
Alicia Weston-Miles: What has been the biggest
challenge you've faced in Congress?
Cong. Frank: The biggest single challenge
goes back to what I said before-to keep reminding
myself that doing the best I can in the given circumstances
is only part of the job. Part of the job is also trying
to improve the broader context. It's easier just to
take the world as a given and operate within that.
The harder part is to also try to change your world.
My temperament is I'm happier just to fool around
within the margins, but I've got to remind myself
that part of my job is to go beyond that.
The hardest part of the job,
just in personal terms, is the fact that you have to
do it in two places. That's the thing that makes us
the most tired, that wears us down. I have a responsibility
to be accessible to 600,000 people four hundred miles
away and also to be here. Now that's not as bad as your
members who have to be 3000 miles away. You have members
of Congress from California who spend the better part
of two out of every seven days on airplanes going back
and forth every week. That's a very severe drain on
people and it is very difficult.
Chris Sun: During our stay in Washington,
DC we've met some pretty incredible people at all
levels of government. One of the most apparent commonalties
shared by every single person that we've spoken to,
is that they each work incredibly hard and have a
deep passionate dedication for what they do. In a
way, this came as a bit of a surprise to us. Why do
you think this aspect of the government is not more
widely known?
Cong. Frank: I'm glad that you've got that
ingredient exactly right. Even the people with whom
I disagree, I mostly respect. This is on the whole,
a group of hard-working people. 90% of us would be
making considerabley more money and working less if
we were in some other job. In Congress, the public
votes in the best. The general level of intelligence
and work is high, and articulate people are plentiful.
I put it on the press. It was not this bad thirty
years ago, but that really has been the case, since
Watergate, and it has evolved. The press has now taken
an adversarial position. In fact one of the leading
TV reporters said to me the other day, "well of course,
we have an adversarial role." Well that's not supposed
to be. They should have a neutral role. They're not
supposed to be adversarial, but they are. The reporters'
mission these days, and that of the whole culture of
journalism, is to capture anger. Reporters will call
me up and say, "we're doing a story about so-and-so,
what do you think about her?" and if I don't have something
critical or negative to say, they don't want to hear
about it. You learn early on to not fall into this trap.
You'll comment, "Oh I think she's alright, she's very
hard-working, I was impressed when she did this, I was
impressed when she did that," and then they'll say,
"Well, okay, that's good to know, but if you had to
criticize her, what would you say?" You give that answer,
and then see the article in which the only thing you
were quoted on was the one criticism, and they don't
say that you had been asked to be critical. So
I really do think that this is a result of how the media
portrays, and I'm glad you had a chance to see this,
a negative picture.
Laura Johnson: Sheldon Wolin, a political
philosopher said, "the strength of democracy has been
its capacity to confront difference and cherish it,
not just to think about it as an impediment to rational
decision-making." How can we foster an attitude that
embraces rather than just tolerates diversity?
Cong. Frank: By talking about it and advocating
it. There's a kind of a natural human reaction to
be afraid of difference. On the other hand, people
are not, in some cases, as prejudiced as they think
they are supposed to be. Now, there are some examples
of this; for instance, I've seen in my lifetime anti-Semitism
essentially collapse as an obstacle to a career in
most places. Racism, on the other hand, has acquired
a kind of sociological and cultural age to it so that
there are real differences in the way that people
have lived and that's a harder one to break down.
How you do it is simply by actively pursuing it. People
want to be unprejudiced if they get some encouragement.
If you give people that encouragement, they will respond.
The way to do it is to make it explicit, to point
it out. Part of it is to draw those lessons and to
be explicit about it. It really is a case where you
just have to confront it on an individual basis. The
government also has to do that, and I think that is
one of Bill Clinton's strengths. Clinton has been,
with regard to race, with regard to gay and lesbian
rights, with regard to immigrants, a very strong advocate
of diversity and someone who has argued for it. That
takes some leadership. I think people will be more
responsive if they get those cues.
Josh Lewis: Both Under Secretary Pickering
at the State Department and Caroline Becraft, the
Assistant Secretary of the Navy told us that America
needs to understand its post-cold war role in the
world. That it is in our own best interest to maintain
a positive global presence and that we have to be
willing to commit some of our resources to create
and sustain a stable global community. Do you agree
with this point of view? How do you think we can best
accomplish it?
Cong. Frank: I agree with the general principle.
However, they say it's in our national interest, and
it isn't always. It's in our moral interest. It's
an interesting thing about politics; in human life,
an individual life, you find people doing things for
selfish reasons and pretending they do them for generous
reasons. With a country, it's the other way around.
Even when we're inclined to do something because it's
the right thing to do morally, the President thinks
he has to say, "Oh we're doing it for selfish reasons."
I want very much to get rid of AIDS in Africa.
It probably won't have a major affect on your lives
whether we do or don't, but we should do it because
it's the right thing to do. The President just declared
that AIDS in Africa is a matter of American national
security. No, it's not. The fact is, we're a big, rich
country, and you can even go visit Africa and the fact
that there are people there dying of AIDS wouldn't have
much impact on you. Unless you feel human sympathy for
them. So they are exaggerating the extent to which it's
in our national interest. I agree with them that we
should do some of these things but we should do them
because it's the right thing to do. I would like to
help the people of Sierra Leone. It's awful that they
are subjected to this vicious thug Senko, but it's not
in my national interest to do that. The people
I represent will live the same lives with or without
this. People make metaphysical statements; no one is
free until everyone is free. That's not true. That's
like saying no one is well-fed unless everyone is well-fed.
The fact is that there could be tens of millions of
people in this world dying of hunger, and you can overeat.
Now that is not morally right, but it doesn't mean you
are going to be hungry. It means that I hope your conscience
will bother you. There's this feeling that the country
won't support that, and therefore you have to kind of
cast it as self-interest when it isn't. The second
thing is that sometimes these people just want to be
the boss for the sake of being the boss when there's
nothing really involved. I'm thinking about Europe.
My view is that Europe is rich enough and self-developed
enough to essentially patrol Europe. I think America
has to have troops in South Korea to protect the South
Koreans against the lunatics that run North Korea, but
we don't need American troops in Europe. Europe can
do that. I'm in favor of pulling the American ground
troops out of Kosovo. There should be European troops
in Kosovo, and American troops in South Korea. They
say, "Oh no, it's the price of world leadership, we
have to have our troops there." I don't know what they
mean, the price of world leadership. It's kind of like
Tom Sawyer, the Europeans can get us to paint their
fence and act like it's some big honor they give us,
and so we do. The average European country spends half
or less of its national income on the military than
we do because we spend it for them. So I agree we should
have an important role in the world, but they exaggerate
the extent to which it's in our national interest, and
minimize the extent that it's the right thing to do.
People also exaggerate the desirability of America doing
it, and therefore we are willing to pay for it when
we shouldn't pay for it.
Jahmin Lerum: In his debate with Stephen Douglas,
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can't separate moral questions
from political questions." He went on to say, "Isn't
it false statesmanship to try to and make policy based
on caring nothing about the very thing that people
care the very most about?" What place do you think
moral issues have in the political arena?
Cong. Frank: Oh, I think they have a very
central place, but you have to define them correctly.
There are different types of morality. When you are
talking about the morality of human interaction, that
has to be at the center of public policy. Why is it
against the law to punch somebody? Because it is immoral
to punch somebody. Why is it against the law to steal
or kill or burn down or rape? Those are immoral acts
and they should be labeled that way.
The problem
is that some of the liberals fall in the trap by saying,
"Well you shouldn't legislate morality." Yes you should.
In a very rich country children should not be hungry.
In the Silicon Valley, 28-year-old millionaires should
not be having their offices cleaned by $7 an hour janitors
who have to live in garages. I don't think that is moral,
and we ought to rearrange things so that's not the case.
The problem is, there is another element of purely personal
morality that doesn't affect anybody else. There the
government ought to stay out, not because it's a question
of morality but because it's a question of purely personal
morality. The best articulation of that was in John
Stewart Mills "On Liberty", and it was a very important
concept. It basically said, if this affects somebody
else, then it ought to be governed by rules. If it only
affects me, then you shouldn't tell me what to do. So
if it's a question of praying, if it's a question of
living up to certain dietary laws, or if it's a question
of personal sexual activity of two mutually consenting
adults, I don't believe that's a question for the government
to get involved in. So yes, I think you should
impose rules that govern interpersonal actions and that
make people treat each other with morals. What I object
to is the notion that when you are making purely personal
choices, which you may consider to be moral, no one
should impose that on you. That's the distinction.
Katie Fayram: Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Caroline Becraft said, in her final advice to us,
"if you've never failed, you have never learned."
What sort of challenges have been your teacher along
the way?
Cong. Frank: Running for office was difficult.
I didn't lose, but I came close to losing. You learn
a lot about yourself and how other people perceive
you. I was a PHD candidate and I learned I'm better
at dealing with a number of things in a short period
of time than working on one thing for a long time.
So I decided at that point not to try to be an academic,
but to get involved in politics so I could move back
and forth in that. Then, being gay obviously has had
a major role in learning for myself the importance
of being honest, and the futility of pretending to
be something substantially different than I am. I
found that to be ultimately impossible.
Alicia Weston-Miles: Have you received any
discrimination from anybody in the Congress or felt
that you weren't given respect?
Cong. Frank: No, mostly not. I was afraid
that might happen, but I thought, I just got to do
this anyway. It really has had virtually no impact.
Now, if I was planning to run for majority leader
or speaker, then being gay would have made that impossible.
Other members couldn't do that because they are representing
their districts and not every district would be ready
for that. In terms of my day-to-day relationships
with people, actually I had incidents with one or
two members. There was one member who was a little
wacky. He told me, because he was afraid of AIDS,
that he had stopped coming to the House gym when he
learned that I was gay. He generally was considered
to be kind of crazy. The House majority leader, Dick
Army, early on in '95 or '96 was in a news conference,
and he said, "Well I'm going to write a book but I'm
not going to accept any royalties because I don't
need to have Barney Fag…uh, Frank…say this." You could
even hear it on tape, he said Barney Fag. He said
later on that he didn't mean to say fag, he mispronounced
my name, and that it was a slip of the tongue. My
mother says that in 59 years since she had married
my father, no one had ever called her Elsie Fag. (Laughter)
It's not a common mispronunciation. He was severely
criticized for it, but he claimed he didn't mean to
say it. That was really the only incident, and it
wound up hurting him greatly. In fact he told somebody
the other day, a member from Congress, that he regrets
that as much as anything in his life. He thought it
was unfair that he was so persecuted, and that he
didn't mean to say it.
My own view is
that he didn't mean to say it, but he was thinking it
because it was in the back of his mind. Other than that,
there's nothing.
Jenny Johnston: Yesterday, Congressman Sam
Farr told us that prejudices and tolerances are some
things that are learned. I was wondering, how do we
discourage prejudices that many people have already
learned and instead encroach time?
Cong. Frank: Well, by just talking to people
and drawing the lessons explicitly. Generally what
happens is when people encounter reality, the prejudice
loses, such as when people meet people of different
races or sexual orientations or ethnicities. What
I'm basically saying is that's not an exception, that's
the reality. But I think it's important for people
who are not themselves prejudiced to draw those lessons
for people.
Derrick Diaz: Benjamin Franklin once said
that "they that give up essential liberty to obtain
a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
To what extent could we, or should we consider laws
to limit some freedoms for the sake of public safety?
Take for example, the dispute over gun control.
Cong. Frank: The question has to be directed
towards a specific example, but I feel that as general
principle, that quote is a bit of an overstatement.
Let's talk about the liberty to drive your car as
fast as you want. You give that up. You stop at traffic
lights. To some extent, when a lot of people are interacting,
you have to accept some restraint. They are infringes
on your liberty, but they are necessary. That's the
question. In any given situation, how much do you
have to do?
As
far as gun control is concerned, the legislation is
fairly limited. If you say no gun control, you aren't
just saying people aren't going to own pistols. Congress
in the nineteen thirties outlawed Thompson sub-machine
guns, Tommy guns, because of their misuse in Prohibition.
If you are against gun control, what's the argument
for not outlawing Tommy guns? For that matter, one of
the big arguments against gun control is that the people
need to be able to protect themselves against the government.
Well, if you believe that the average citizen should
be allow to own guns to prevent tyranny, then you really
can't stop at rifles. You'd probably need some shoulder-fired
missiles, and maybe some tanks. You can't beat the U.S.
Army with a semi-automatic rifle. The United State Army's
weaponry is overpowering. If you really believe that
the people have to be armed so they can resist the government,
then I don't know what weapons they can't have. Land
mines? Why shouldn't they be able to mine their front
yard? (Laughter) Well, if you believe in that you can
put up a sign that says, "Careful, land mines. Stay
off." (Laughter)
Alison Alderdice: Hillary Clinton said, "our
global future depends on the willingness of every
nation to invest in its people, especially women and
children." We asked Theresa Loar and Donna Shalala
recently, if they thought we as a nation were investing
enough in our women and children, and they came down
squarely for increased funding for education. Where
else do you think we should be increasing our investment?
Cong. Frank: Health care. It's a disgrace
in this country that people go without health care.
We should have universal health insurance. Also, housing.
One of the problems we have is as much of society
gets richer, those that do not participate in that
prosperity become worse off.
If you want a piece of advice,
I'll give it to you - be very careful about metaphors
when you are discussing public policy. They are almost
always misleading and people start treating the metaphors
as reality. For example, John Kennedy used to say the
rising tide lifts all boats. Meaning that as the economy
prospers, everybody is better off. That's just not true.
In fact, if you are living in San Francisco or Boston,
and you have a low-wage job with little chance of advancing,
and are not very highly educated, as the economy prospers,
you may well be worse off because all of a sudden you
can't afford to live there anymore. That's a common
phenomenon in all our metropolitan areas. The lower
income people are being placed out of the market, and
it's happening all over this country.
Dov Rohan: Do you think that we have come
to depend too much on legislative process and not
enough on other intermediating institutions such as
the church and public service institutions to solve
our social problems?
Cong. Frank: No, they have very different
functions. There's a conservative argument that we
don't need government; we can use these other functions.
In 1996, the Conference of Catholic Bishops put out
a regular book on the issue. Essentially they said
in one place, "some people say you don't need an active
government because the churches can do it. Well, we're
the churches and we're here to tell you that ain't
so." The Catholic Church, which is the greatest single
dispenser of charity in the United States, says, and
I wish we still had that book here, "look, we can't
do it by ourselves, this is crazy. The government
has to do it."
What these institutions can do is they
can help with the quality of life, but they can't deal
with the quantity of life. They can't see that tens
of thousands of people who would otherwise be hungry
are fed. They can't provide adequate medical care. They
can provide stuff after emergency help, they can minister
to people's needs, but they cannot fill, on an ongoing
basis, the needs of people who don't have enough in
life. That's the role of government. It says that some
things just have to be done on a large scale and private
charity can't do it. Private charity can't replace food
stamps. Private charity can't house the elderly poor.
You need a mix. Now there are some things a government
shouldn't try to do. When it gets into the quality of
life, we'd better leave those to individual choices.
Student: What do you think the biggest
challenges to democracy are today?
Cong. Frank: It differs from country to country.
For us it is how, in a population where the most active
and intelligent sector is doing well economically,
can you find the political support to help the people
who are not doing well? How do we build some fairness
into the system? In other countries that haven't historically
been democratic, it is, how do you move towards democracy
at the same time that you're moving to rationalize
your economy? This is because rationalizing your economy,
moving from inefficiency to efficiency, in the short
run, creates severe problems for some people. Factories
get closed down, competition comes in and people get
thrown out of work. That could be a hard thing to
do to get people to move from command-type economies
to market economies and still vote for their same
representatives. An international economic entity
will go to a country and say, "alright, we have two
things we want you to do. First of all, we want you
to be more democratic. Secondly, we want you to throw
more people out of work and raise food prices." Well,
people aren't willing to do that.
For us, it's
different. It's a little easier. We have a situation
now where we are creating enormous amount of wealth,
but we're also exacerbating inequality. At least the
people at the low end vote to defend themselves politically.
What does happen though is that in any given situation,
they may not be able to win. But as more and more people
get angrier and angrier, they feel that they are being
left out, and they can block things from happening.
For instance in trade with China which some people think
should be an easy one, "well it's going to win today."
It's going to win narrowly because a lot of Americans
say, "Hey, I don't care about this great new economy.
It's screwing me!" Until that stops, you're going to
have resistance. Part of these quotes you stated from
Pickering and others about globalization, are conflicting
with many Americans saying, "Well, that's bad news for
me." What we ought to be doing is easing their fears
by helping them a little bit. That's the big challenge
for our democracy. How do you preserve the capitalist
system, which requires a certain amount of inequality
but not let the level of inequality get out of hand?
Zack Donoghue: Historian Barbara Tuckman defines
a hero as someone with nobility of purpose. Who are
some of your heroes?
Cong. Frank: Oh, I think you need more than
nobility of purpose. You need nobility of purpose
and adverse circumstances. Not everybody has a chance
to be a hero. When John Kennedy was asked how he got
to be a hero, do you know what his answer was? "The
Japanese sunk my boat." He was basically saying that
he got to be a hero because a Japanese destroyer sunk
his PT boat and he had to swim to safety with somebody
else's straps in his teeth. If the Japanese hadn't
sunk his boat, he couldn't have been a hero because
you need the opportunity to be one.
Certainly, Martin Luther
King, Jr. John Lewis who is now the Majority Whip of
the House is really one of my genuine heroes. There
was a guy, not widely known who was murdered 20 years
ago named Howard Lowenstein, who is a very important
figure for a lot of people. He was the man who originated
the notion of the Democrats denying Lyndon Johnson renomination
in 1968 because of the war with Viet Nam. He was heroic
to me because he showed how you could take on a very
difficult political situation while still being realistic,
and he didn't give in. Nelson Mandela I'd say is one
of the genuine heroes of our time. What he did, against
a terrible adversarial circumstances could only be the
work of a very extraordinary man. To be elected as President,
and to step aside voluntarily leaving a very competent
successor is certainly not to be taken for granted.
So I give him much credence for all he's done.
Karl Holzknecht: Drawing on your experience,
what is the best advice that you can give to our generation?
Cong. Frank: First of all, don't worry about
the differences between generations. The truth is
the truth and values are values, no matter how old
you are. Also, get to know yourself. Get to know what
you can do and what you can't do. You can't hold a
gun to your own head. You're never going to be successful
in life, constantly forcing yourself to do something
you hate. I don't care what it is. If you're working
out or dieting when you're trying to lose weight,
you better include the foods you like to eat. (Laughter)
If you are trying to work out, if there are some exercises
you really hate, don't do them, because then you'll
be so annoyed that you won't do any of the others.
You want to push yourself,
but you don't want to push yourself off the cliff. That's
true about your profession. You basically need to find
something that you like to do, and then once you've
done that and gotten yourself grounded, then do something
to make the world a better place. Unless you're an unusual
person, like Mother Theresa, you can't be totally self-sacrificing.
So I would say, be who you have to be and then build
on that. Get involved in some ways and try to help other
people.
Students: Thank you so much.
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