Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did.

I'm a Catholic by background. I was raised in Goa, a part of India that was visited by Portuguese missionaries a few hundred years ago, which explains my last name.

Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views. In the process they have made religious believers into second-class citizens.

In philosophy seminars, the choice is usually between good and evil. In the real world, however, the choice is often between a bad guy and a worse guy.

Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith.

Christianity enhanced the notion of political and social accountability by providing a new model: that of servant leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome no one would have dreamed of considering political leaders anyone's servants. The job of the leader was to lead. But Christ invented the notion that the way to lead is by serving the needs of others, especially those who are the most needy.

America is simultaneously the most attractive and most repulsive place on the planet. It is most loved and most hated.