How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.

Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.

Religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion.

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.