Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.