All war aims for impunity.

In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual's responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician's responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm. Michael Ignatieff, a former professor at Harvard and contributing writer for the magazine, is a member of Canada's Parliament and deputy leader of the Liberal Party.

Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life.

How do you keep war accountable to the American people when war becomes invisible and virtual?

Patriotism is the secret resource of a successful society.

Cynics who say power is all that counts in politics forget that power without ideas is just improvisation.

We must not lose sight of the fundamental issue of policy which is that people who come to the country on visa status must never be abused.