The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

The people who flood our living-rooms with a smorgasbord of commercial messages about fetid breath, moist underarms and troubled intestines know this: an appropriate time, place and manner to sell a product is any that sells the product.

In democracy, as quaintly understood, voters pick their representatives. American democracy increasingly reverses that. Legislative districts are drawn to protect incumbents who, effectively, pick their voters.

We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual.

Americans complain a lot about the government and they voice a generalized suspicion of the government, but they constantly clammer for more of it.

Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people.

There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.