Gavin Newsom

And we see echoes, patterns, themes, motifs, or as Mark Twain is supposed to have said, rhymes.

You know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

So all these things are there and they're lazy ways to approach this subject.

To be a, I mean, America at its best,

you know, has always been pluralistic and like an alloy benefiting from all the ingredients that went into it.

When it's at its worst is when it's nativist and saying, oh, there's really only one us and you're definitely not part of that.

And this attempt at, I mean, look, one of my favorite amendments is the 14th.

And, you know, the first really trumps it.

But people say, oh, First Amendment, free speech or freedom to assemble.

Those are number two and three.

The first is Congress will make no establishment of a religion.

We're the first country on Earth that didn't have an official religion.

And it made all the difference, the energy it gave us by being able to draw in from the people who don't believe in any God or believe in 20 gods.

has been a phenomenal achievement in the course of human history.

And maybe we should just remember, starting with the Declaration and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and, you know, the Land-Grant College Act and the Homestead Act and national parks and child labor and antitrust and, you know,

The Social Security, labor's right to organize, the GI Bill, the interstate highway system, a man on the moon, Medicare, Medicaid, I've said Social Security, up to the Affordable Care Act, so many things.

That we have done, which have been transforming not only for our own people, but for the world.

And then you find, inevitably, the retrenchment that takes place.

The people, the oligarchs, the former slave owners who are still unhappy of the way the Civil War took out and want to just...

you know, get back what they had before.