If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft.) Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word National.

Hyperbole expands in societies where articulateness atrophies.

The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.

Sports is the toy department of life.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election.

One radical free spirit nonconformist is pretty much like another.

Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.