America has faced much more difficult times, including potential national extinction, without flinching.

Those who actually hate animals to the point of being cruel to them are outcasts to the rest of us, no matter where in the world they live.

It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.

In matters large and small, many people seemed concerned about churlishness, an ugliness in our relationships that appears to be increasing rather than decreasing.

The worst thing that can happen to us in an ideological struggle is to become what we are fighting.

We don't defeat evil by becoming evil.

As I listened, it occurred to me that interest in and affection for the animals that share the planet with us may be a more unifying force than any other.