In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.

When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger.

It takes two things to make a political lie work: a powerful person or institution willing to utter it, and another set of powerful institutions to amplify it.

It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues.

Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

In Ronald Reagans case, he always bore with him this extraordinary ability to radiate confidence, optimism, clarity, a blitheness of spirit, in what other people saw as chaos. And after the 1970s, that was catnip.

Ive summarized dozens of books in my literary career; its become rather second nature.