The values, the programs, the formula, the determination, and the patriotism responsible for America's past success are still here to be tapped.

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.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.

American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world.

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.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.