Each voice carries a portion of value, no matter how unpalatable or distasteful that voice may be: no one person, government, ideology, transnational, or religious institution can own and dominate the whole.

Charisma is a sign of the calling. Saints and pilgrims are defiantly moved by it.

Followers of another political party tell us that we will strengthen ourselves by ignoring our history, our traditions, our mythologies, our culture and vision, and by following the American way.

We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.

Alienation and loneliness plant the seeds for rebellion and consciousness.

We have to learn how to contact one another over an enormous land space, across five-and-a-half time zones, in what as once a wilderness of scattered settlements, in what is now a sprawl of suburban edge cities and satellite towns. Technology forges connections and disconnections here.

The Trojan War without Homer was nothing more than a battle over trade routes.