The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.

It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.