The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.

Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.

The status quo is working.

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

Secrecy is for losers.

The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.

There is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future - that community asks for and gets chaos.