Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.

Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feeble-minded and the only resort for historians.

Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made.

Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

To my three sons, Peter, Scott, and Alexander who pulled me from the 18th Century and back into the present on a regular basis and therefore made me a better person, thank you. And to my wife, who sits at the table there. Who is right about almost everything.

...the very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office.