Peter Beinart excoriates the doughface liberals who during the Cold War put anti-imperialism before anti-totalitarianism and demanded total moral purity on the part of the United States, thus opposing any action in the real world to resist Soviet expansionism. If the Democrats were, as he advocates, to return to the Trumanesque anti-totalitarian liberalism that held sway in the party from roughly 1947 to 1972, the party and the country would be better off.

I think all of us in the commentary business need to take a deep breath. And it can't be true that every single week the world is ending in some different way. And this presidency [of Donald Trump] will be judged like all presidencies - on the state of the economy and by events.

Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.

Any [political] party without principles is rudderless and passive.

America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution.

The debate over troop levels will rage for years; it is...beside the point.

Yes, this is 21st-century America. Where we have better means to treat mental illness than ever before, but choose to let the insane people decide to get it or not.