Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better.

In many parts of the world, more people have access to a mobile device than to a toilet or running water...

Dwight Eisenhower was candid in private, but he was circumspect in public.

You must get courageous men, men of strong views and let them debate and argue with each other.

Kids are more nimble than wise.

If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted at the base of Manhattan island with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God.

Some Christians worried about a faith that was so embracing as to be meaningless, that exalted not the Almighty so much as the American way of life. When civil religion bleached the challenge from faith and left behind a watery patriotism, there was room for concern.