Offering 'comprehensive' reform usually means years of arguing and horse-trading among pressure groups to get anything done. By the time all the special interests are appeased or bought off, the resulting elephantine legislation typically looks nothing like what was intended. In short, big-government medicine usually doesn't work on big-government sickness. If President Obama wants 'comprehensive' change, it would be better simply not to spend any more money we don't have.

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.

For all the criticism about warlords, it is now likely that Afghanistan will never again be turned over to al Qaeda to train thousands to conduct the type of murder we saw on September 11. For all real problems with ambushes and sabotage, there will be no more gassings, mass murdering, invading neighbors, sending guided missiles across borders or no-fly zones in Iraq, but rather the hard work of consensual government - a difficult process easily caricatured, but when completed universally admired.

This is something that Donald Trump has been very effective at exploiting because throughout our history, one of the things that was important to galvanize the country against a perceived threat has been philology.

I think the Democrat Party is taking its cue from the media. When the media has a narrative, whether it's the use of profanity, the Democratic Party follows it.

The wisdom and spirit of Churchill not only saved Britain from the Third Reich but saved Western civilization from a Nazi Dark Ages when no other nation was willing to take up that defense. Churchill was the greatest military, political and spiritual leader of the 20th century.

It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it.