I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.

If anyone is tweeting right now, I'm not pulling a knife on David Cronenberg!

Dreams are evidence that we are creatures who produce more meaning than we can ourselves understand.

We tend to think of the problems of globalization and cultural identity as peculiar to our times. In fact they are rooted in ancient problems of civic belonging.

Friendship requires a leap, not of faith but of regard.

How doe we create the world we want, rather than a world that just happens to us?

Paradoxically, the problems of politics often arise not in the form of a problem of scarcity, but as one of abundance.