The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

There's something totally crazy about this.

You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.

The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.