Having emigrated to the United States as a small boy from the Soviet Union, I am instinctively suspicious of socialism and inveterately opposed to communism.

Diplomatic eminences often natter on about preventive action, making the obvious point that it's better to cure festering ills before they metastasize into something much worse.

The history of the modern Republican Party is the story of moderates being driven out and conservatives taking over - and then of those conservatives in turn being ousted by those even further to the right.

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.

No President can achieve everything or please everyone.

I love what I do and realize I am supremely lucky to be able to make my living by writing and speaking about the news of the day.

I have been a Republican as long as I can remember.

When Democrats aren't being fiscally reckless, they are economically irresponsible. Democrats bemoan corporate greed and have not a positive word to say about the entrepreneurs that have made our economy the envy of the world.

History suggests that economic upheavals such as the Industrial and Information Revolutions eventually play themselves out and leave the entire world better off.

Republicans used to bash President Barack Obama for alienating American allies, but Trump is turning off our partners like no one ever has.

Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.

The spread of communications technologies - social media, TV news channels - aggravates societal divisions and discord. All that online snarling is making us jittery.

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.

At the University of California at Berkeley, my interests broadened from military history to diplomatic history and other disciplines.

Olga E. Kagan was the strongest woman I knew - and probably the reason I've spent my life with other strong women.

For years, as a seller of real estate and star of reality TV, Donald Trump made a living wooing customers and viewers. His selling skills were good enough that he even convinced voters to elect him as president in spite of his near-total lack of qualifications.

History has been my primary intellectual passion ever since, as a boy in Southern California, I began reading books on World War II and the life of Winston Churchill.

At Mom's funeral, mourner after mourner spoke about what a wonderful teacher she was. She was certainly devoted to her students.

The crisis of the old order in Europe produced nearly 80 years of often bloody conflict between democracy and its foes from 1914 to 1991.

And I think the only way you're going to improve US foreign policy and set a sound course for the future is if you're willing to look back at what went wrong before.

I have not given up my faith in democracy - it remains the worst form of government except for all the others - but I have given up my youthful expectation that it would inevitably triumph.

I am certain that my family - my grandmother, mother and myself - had a credit score of zero when we arrived in 1976. There were no credit cards in the Soviet Union, and we didn't have any money.

I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.

We have a long, ugly history of white supremacy in this country, ranging from Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans down to the 1924 Immigration Act to keep non-Europeans out.