As we celebrate this season of gratitude and forgiveness, Eric Liu adds three things to celebrate: our presence, our openness, and our heritage. Liu says presence matters because it's getting too easy to retreat into small circles of comfort. He says openness is to be celebrated because open and inclusive societies tend to outperform and outlast closed, exclusive ones. And when it comes to celebrating our heritage, he advises us to have an open mind, saying "Who we are as Americans is this: a people ever arguing over who we are as Americans."

Liu's address was delivered December 7, 2019, at the Town Hall Forum as part of Citizen University's Civic Saturday, the civic analog to a faith gathering.