Let me name three of the people who influenced me, although it's definitely not a complete list. Ayesha Jalal, the formidable Pakistani-American historian, has rigorously re-evaluated Jinnah's political strategies leading up to Partition. Akbar Ahmed, a former diplomat and now a distinguished scholar, has documented Jinnah's life as a man who welcomed, worked with, and even married people of other faiths. And then there is Ardeshir Cowasjee, the great Parsi newspaper columnist, who in his mid-80s is a kind of living history of all of Pakistan, old enough to have known Jinnah himself.

To take one example, I mean, the whole issue of bathrooms and gender - in this particular election, when the stakes were so high, the fact that Democrats and liberals, more generally, lost a lot of political capital on this issue that frightened people. People were misinformed about certain things, but it was really a question of where young people would be going to the bathroom and where they would be in lockers.

We've learned something about President-elect [Donald] Trump's choice for secretary of defense. Lawmakers in Congress intend to proper debate over whether retired General James Mattis meets a requirement for civilian control of the military.

As we have seen after every other [Donald] Trump controversy, this one only increased their enthusiasm for him. His supporters thought the idea of a temporary halt in Muslims coming to the U.S. was a common sense proposal in a time of great fear about terrorism.

President-elect Trump has said he would like to improve relations with Russia. His choice for defense secretary views Russia as America's number one threat.

Ever since [Ronald] Reagan, they've been able to capture the message and an understanding - or persuade people of a certain understanding of what the nation is about and what's good for it.

Tradition has to be retaken by the liberal forces, so that they can show their values of tolerance and democracy not as novel western ideas but as ones indigenous to Pakistan, as a part of its very creation.