As proud and capable as it is, I think the idea that the military can build new countries is a tall order, and it's the sort of thing that we would only expect from a military that we have superresourced and thought of as supercapable.

The single best thing about honesty is that it requires no follow-up.

My idea of what was going on in politics was driven by activism. I came out when I was 17, and right away I started working in the AIDS activist movement. For me, politics was about getting drugs approved and getting prisoners access to the same kind of drugs that you could get on the outside. It was about getting needle exchanges approved. That was politics. These were policy problems that were killing people, and we were trying to get them changed.

Americans are incredibly religious as a nation, and we have gotten that way by having the government stay out of religion and say religion is a private matter. The government doesn't take sides. Public schools don't promote or denigrate any religion.

That`s how you end up with a guy like Dan Fried, overseeing the U.S. sanctions against Russia for Russia did in Ukraine and Crimea.Russia hates those sanctions more than they love life. They hate those sanctions. So, of course, you need your toughest and most experienced guy running those sanctions.

[Dan Fried] served six presidents over a 40-year career dating back to the [Jimmy] Carter administration.

As proud and capable as it is, I think the idea that the military can build new countries is a tall order, and it's the sort of thing that we would only expect from a military that we have superresourced and thought of as supercapable.