We are a species that must try to impose and find systems - systems of thought, ways of organizing and categorizing reality.

And in the minds of progressives you are free to live anyway you want so long as it's progressive.

If we say that anyone who 'moralizes' must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.

We are a species that must try to impose and find systems - systems of thought, ways of organizing and categorizing reality.

It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism - a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization - became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent - not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself - became the highest virtue.

If you write for the critics, only the critics will read you.

We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.