I wish I could attribute the absence of any conventional Arab offensive in the last 20 years to a change of political climate or a willingness to abide by past accords. But unfortunately it is more likely that the Egyptians or Syrians concluded that the next time their tanks headed to Tel Aviv, there was nothing stopping the counterassaults from ending up in downtown Cairo or Damascus.

If I talk to black students on campus, they're not sympathetic to the people who are not sympathetic with [Black Lives Matter movement]. The fact that you want to argue rather than find some common ground, I think, has gotten a lot worse in the last years.

The easily ridiculed, so-so status quo often hides Herculean efforts by those whom we take for granted, and who, working in the shadows, guarantee civilization instead of chaos.

We have had raucous moments in our history. And I think we're in one now. But it's not going to endanger the future of democracy.

Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.

Popular culture is simply a reflection of what the majority seems to want.

It's very difficult, historically, to define what an elite is. But whatever it is, people are very angry at that idea, I think, not so much because of wealth or privilege as much as attitude that the populous masses, if I could use that overused term, feel that a particular government or cultural group is not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.