Indeed, one modern President abjured God altogether, ending speeches with a chaste 'Thank you very much.' This was Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely devout President of the postwar period.

It is no solution to define words as violence or prejudice as oppression, and then by cracking down on words or thoughts pretend that we are doing something about violence and oppression. No doubt it is easier to pass a speech code or hate-crimes law and proclaim the streets safer than actually to make the streets safer, but the one must never be confused with the other... Indeed, equating "verbal violence" with physical violence is a treacherous, mischievous business.

To get people to compromise, you have to give them stuff.

What we have done over the last 40 or 50 years is systematically attacked and weakened the parties, the political machines, the professionals, and insiders, and hacks, and all the tools that they use to get politicians to play well together. And with those gone, you get chaos.

In science we kill our hypothesis instead of each other.

Compromise is what it's got to be all about when you're governing, because no one is ever going to have a big enough majority to just do what they want to do all the time.

There will be more coming afterwards if we don't re-empower politicians to get organized and work together.