Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low.

If half-black Barack Obama had decided years ago to call himself white - which his genes certainly entitled him to do - his story would have carried very different meaning. If millions of part-black people had followed him into whiteness, then the N.A.A.C.P. would be in true crisis.

My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II, and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform.

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

The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious.

To love country means to rise above I am because I am. It is to recognize that I am because we are.

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.