Hello, everyone, and welcome to this podcast introduction to this week's program, which is 10 things about the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments with Dr. Lindsey Chervinsky in fascinating conversation, so why did we have the 13th, 14th and 15th

13th abolishes slavery, the 15th gives black men the right to vote and the 14th has an equal protection and do process clause

it's meant to make sure that the bill of rights is applied in its fundamental ways equally across the country and not abrogated in certain states

in this case former Confederate states and it also of course has the birthright clause that anyone who is born in this country

period is a citizen of the United States so there's a lot of backlash against that in certain quarters

now you probably heard it on the Republican debate stage several people say yes we need to abolish the birthright citizenship clause

we are unusual in this if you're born in Sweden you don't have birthright citizenship

if you're born in Finland you don't have birthright citizenship

this is part of the great dream the great experiment you know what a wild and wonderful experiment

and truly for all the problems of the United States the idea of creating a polyglot nation with many ethnicities and religions

and source geographies people from all over the world who come here

and you know they do mostly blend in really quickly their children almost invariably speak English

grandchildren they don't usually stay in sequester enclave they blend in most immigrants historically have wanted to wash to become Americans first

and Polish-American second and Americans first and Italian-Americans second

that varies a little bit from time to time but on the whole that's the way it's been it's been an astonishingly successful experiment

without great tensions you know the Chinese exclusion laws or you know the internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II

or you know the apartheid which has enormous tenacity even now but still on the whole

we have been wildly successful in this and maybe the trajectory is bent towards justice

it doesn't really feel that at the moment but I think we're in a particularly disillusioned

even cynical moment here I'm sitting in my living room it's fall my goodness outside the house and on the front curb

is Rosanate my air stream it's spectacular it is actually magnificent I've been camping in it for the last week

now it's about time to winterize it it has a couple little things that have to get worked out of valve here

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