Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

America has long raised political and cultural cognitive dissonance to an art form. We are capable of living with enormous inequality and injustice while convincing ourselves that we are in fact moving toward what Churchill called the "broad, sun-lit uplands."

A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far.

The government invented the Internet.

The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.