Barack Obama

You've got on one side John Lewis and a ragtag band of Pullman porters and maids and clergy and a couple rabbis and college kids.

And they're marching from one side and on the other side you've got folks with billy clubs on horseback and fire hoses and dogs and all that.

And

What John Lewis represented was the narrative that says we the people means just what it says.

That we hold these truths to be self-evident.

That all men are created equal.

And on the other side was the fact of slavery and conquest and hierarchy and domination and if you didn't have property you didn't vote and women weren't involved and

And that was always part of America, too.

Right.

And the question has always been, can we pull off this experiment in which people are showing up from all over the place?

They're not tied together by blood.

They don't necessarily worship God.

God in the same way or worship God at all.

They speak different languages.

They have all these weird foods.

They show up with these odd customs.

And some of them were dragged here in chains.

And some of them had their land taken from them and their culture destroyed.

And out of all that, can we create a shared creed that

allows us to live peacefully together and get stuff done.