I Believe California Has a Right to Exist

By David Wolpe

Monday, March 09, 2026

 

Last week, a New York Times report on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s pointed criticism of Israel included this curious clarification: “Izzy Gardon, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, said that the governor ‘believes in Israel’s right to exist—and its right to defend itself.’”

 

Given this statement, I feel it is appropriate to affirm that I believe that Gavin Newsom also has the right to exist, and I further believe that California itself has the right to exist. And the right to defend itself, specifically from Nevada, but not necessarily from Oregon.

 

I realize that this position may be controversial. As a spiritual leader, it is my responsibility to follow my conscience and not the shifting polls, which, coincidentally, currently align with my conscience.

 

Yes, this position may arouse some ire. Many insist that California is a colonial enterprise, and much of it was stolen from its original inhabitants, the members of the liberal-arts faculty of UC Berkeley. Moreover, California’s mongrel architecture proves that we, the current inhabitants of the land, have no authentic roots here.

 

My own small slice of this state, Los Angeles, conceals its original name, which is El Pueblo de la Reina de los Ángeles. To be honest, I can’t even pronounce it correctly. Even more troubling, some have suggested that those who gave Los Angeles its original name were not themselves indigenous to the land, though quite-possibly-fake scholars I consulted on ChatGPT argue that they could be considered “approximately 30 to 40 percent more indigenous than most members of the Newsom family.” (Claude says “40 to 50 percent,” but the Department of War disputes this.)

 

I raise these points about indigeneity because the word has a contested meaning: To some, it means “deserving,” and to others, including, possibly, Governor Newsom, it means “not Jewish.”

 

The issue here is not merely competing claims of indigeneity. Providence itself has at times ruled against California’s existence. Fires, earthquakes, mudslides, regressive taxes, and other natural disasters seem to be unmistakable hints from above. Californians nonetheless angrily defy nature. If they humbled themselves, they would see that they have crowded into a place not their own, whose rainbow coalition experiences almost no rain and whose ground itself can take on the characteristics of a serial killer. It is no wonder that their desire to not die is seen by some as an unforgivable expression of hubris, and may tempt some testosterone-laden people in Washington to bomb it until Baja becomes Maha.

 

Many say that California, which has the eighth-largest economy in the world, “controls” the other states, that its tech billionaires are enmeshed in some sort of “conspiracy” to dominate the banks, the movie industry, the social-media companies, drone surveillance, and Instagram standards. Of course such theories gain no purchase among the thoughtful and irenic inhabitants of our purple-mountain-majestied land.

 

In my magnanimity, I will continue to conditionally grant the right to exist to both California and its current governor. But I’ve got my eye on them.