Citizenship in the 21st century requires more than paying your taxes and voting and occasionally running for office. That even if you're never in political office, you have political responsibilities. You can make your society stronger and better.

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our president [Barack Obama] and a lot of other Democrats.

No we can't cast ourselves as liberals.

Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.

If you come from a wealthy country with open borders, unless you seriously believe you can kill, imprison or occupy all your enemies, you have to make a world with more friends and fewer enemies - with more partners and fewer terrorists.

Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell.

If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama.