America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush.

You want to defend citizenship? Don't persecute or isolate those without papers. Just live like a citizen. That'd be a first-class way to be American.

America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush.

I had heard so much negative talk about our generation, that we're slackers and young fogies, that I knew wasn't true of the people I know.

The boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay young forever or to stop aging. But it is possible by committing to show up for each others in community after community, to earn a measure of immortality.

We're all better off...when we're all better off.

We all want merit to mean something, and we all may be tempted to reduce that meaning to something measurable and concrete like an SAT score. The reality, though, is that who deserves entry into an institution depends on what the institution exists to do.