We have thirty five million people and are growing in population at a rate of half a million people a year. We have great universities and museums, great entrepreneurs and political leaders. We also have great cities and agricultural wealth beyond the imaginings of the first European settlers to build their lives here. Are we tiring in our quest for human liberation and prosperity? I find that hard to believe but I am full of optimism even in the worst of times. Thirty five million people here produce more annually than all but a handful of nations on the planet. We are composed of every racial group on earth and every religion on earth is practiced here. We live in peace with one another most of the time and the level of opportunity created here has brought the world to our shores and ports seeking a share in our bounty.

I came here from another state; my wife's family has been born here for two generations. We are both entrepreneurs and love living here even though we are widely traveled in the nation and in my wife's case in the world. Our grandchildren all lived here until today. My son in Pennsylvania has a new daughter today and we are traveling to see her next week. We will return, to our home in a warm desert town and the place we love most of all those we have seen. We have mountains and deserts and green verdant hills and the greatest ocean on earth here. We have farms that produce more food per acre than most places on the planet. Our business community is vital and strong even with the tax burden we impose on them in order to offer government services that add to our prosperity. We have poor people in plenty too and prisoners in our prisons in vast numbers. Can we continue to grow and flourish? Time will tell for certain but I think we will prevail.

The human spirit lives here in all of its myriad styles and historic cultural breadth and depth. We are a generous people because we have had so much, done so much and created so much. Oh yes there are contradictions aplenty in our toddling civilization, and they have made us richer in the way that only diversity can. We have had our prejudices and our fears and our great moments of insight into the sameness that all humans have in common. The poor have come here and become wealthy from the bounty of the earth and the hopes and dreams that drive our creative power. This is the land of El Dorado and we have paved more streets and highways with the gold earned by our commerce than any other comparable population on earth. Our people are the great strength of our society, and our liberal ideals are tempered with a conservative faith in nature and the good of our fellow humans.

California was a magic word in times past. In the time of the great depression we built waterways that are visible from space with the naked eye. We are at the end of the American expansion from coast to coast across this great continent, and the beginning of humanity's expansion into space. We have the dreamers and the workers and the financiers to continue to build the greatest social experiment on earth. We are part of a free nation of men and women who strive to create opportunity for one another and wealth enough for all to share.

Yes we will prevail and my children and grandchildren will share in the work and the prosperity that it brings. Yes we will solve the nature of disease and the problems of an aging population. Yes we will serve humanity and ourselves by inventing new forms of enterprise and use them to so wonderful things. We will do that because of our blessed diversity and our indomitable spirit and in spite of those that cling to what they have because they fear what tomorrow will bring.
We will go beyond the empire of oil and into the reality of hydrogen fuel other things yet undreamed of elsewhere. We are pointed into a future that appears less certain than it did a few short years ago and we will turn that uncertainty to our advantage. We may never get to retire but we will find time enough to play and rest between the long hours of work that any great endeavor requires. We will prevail because we must. We are the people of the hope of mankind and we will work to see that hope fulfilled. God bless you all with the spirit to face the future with hope in the darkest of times and the strength to turn your dreams into a better world for all of us.