The gun-control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts - or even the lives of other people.

Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.

All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.

Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact.

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.

Even when black youth gangs target white strangers on the streets and spew out racial hatred as they batter them and rob them, mayors, police chiefs and the media tiptoe around their racism and many in the media either don't cover these stories or leave out the race and racism involved.