Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.

Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?

What is really shocking in America isn't what's done in and by Washington that is illegal by that what is done in and by Washington that's legal.

Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their backyards at 3 A.M.

There can be no reasonable right to live on sidewalks. Society needs order, and hence has a right to a minimally civilized ambience in public spaces. Regarding the homeless, this is not merely for aesthetic reasons because the anesthetic is not merely unappealing. It presents a spectacle of disorder and decay that becomes a contagion.

Invariably, it is this for which I write: the joy ... of an argument firmly made, like a nail straightly driven, its head flush to the plank.