It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century.

It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable.

It is a cliche these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire - different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless.

It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century.

Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism.

While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria – half a world away from the United States – more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States’ southern border, Mexico will affect America’s destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East.

Americans are opting out of public venues like the playground and the sidewalk for private venues like the healthclub and the mall. We're living our lives inside one form of corporation or another.