If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

The real threat to world stability is not too much American power. It is too little American power.

The United States contributes to peace in both by serving as a buffer between and among regional powers that, while not preparing for armed conflict, do not fully trust one another.

Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.

The main division in the world is between democratic and undemocratic countries.

The United States doesn't do what it does in the world for altruistic reasons. Nobody set out to be the world's government.