There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.

In the Middle Ages people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today's shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.

Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.

We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie, and rage.

There are cycles in American politics. US cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial presidential system. We don't have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself.

Great leaders are willing to retire unloved and unpopular as the price for great exertion.

The great divide in American foreign policy thinking is between those who believe in paper and those who believe in power.