My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?

Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed.

American author Mark Twain, while viewed as liberal and non-judgmental, did at times demonstrate both these characteristics. While his reasons for detesting the Christian faith are unclear, they seem to have been profound and deep-rooted. Having lambasted the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, in a later quote he referred to the Book of Mormon as "chloroform in print."

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.

I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.