It is, in fact, precisely to defend the right to free speech that countless patriots have given the last full measure of devotion.

I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism.

On both sides of the Atlantic, politics has come to be dominated by vitriolic name-calling and pervasive dishonesty.

The case for democracy is that voters in the aggregate will make better decisions than a lone monarch or dictator would.

Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.

Neoconservatism' once had a real meaning - back in the 1970s. But the label has now become meaningless. With many of those who are described as neocons, including me, fleeing the Trumpified right, the term's sell-by date has passed.

Silence is complicity. All Republicans who stand mute in the face of Trump's latest racism are telling you who they really are.

As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women.

I don't know if I can ever change the world, but at least I can change the oil in my car.

I am by no means suggesting that everyone who uses the neocon label is doing so as an anti-Semitic smear, but the word has been used often enough in that ugly context that it should make any person of goodwill think twice before employing it.

You can debate when the conservative movement became a racket - I nominate 1996, the year Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes created Fox News Channel to monetize right-wing outrage - but there is no doubt it has long since passed that point.

My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial.

This idea that you can't be an honest man and a Washington politician is a myth, a crock made up by sellouts and careerist hacks who don't stand for anything and are impatient with people who do. It's possible to do this job with honor and dignity.

One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.

Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market - the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they'd be looking for jobs again.

Creating legislation is a tough process. But watering down legislation? Strangling it with lawsuits and comment letters and blue-ribbon committees? Not so tough, it turns out.

There are some who think that the government is limited in how many corruption cases it can bring against Wall Street, because juries can't understand the complexity of the financial schemes involved. But in 'U.S.A. v. Carollo,' that turned out not to be true.

Within the cult of Wall Street that forged Mitt Romney, making money justifies any behavior, no matter how venal.

The NFL, sadly, has a fatal environmental problem: It kills its workers.

We may be many things, we Americans, but we always get the job done.

America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside.

What makes us feel pessimistic about the world, ultimately, is the way the media encourage us to believe that our fate hangs on the every move of the promise-breaking, terminally disappointing Teflon liars in Washington.