ALAN WOLFE

Liberalism is the answer for which modernity is the question

To teach kids that creationism explains something about the world is no different than teaching them that the earth is flat.

If once in America the question of religious toleration was raised in defense of nonbelievers who dissented from religious orthodoxy, today it is raised by believers who feel excluded from a predominantly secular public world.

Organized into a movement or state and motivated by a cause that gives them passion and purpose, practitioners of political evil are capable of carrying out violence on levels that far surpass those realizable by any lone individual.

Most Americans reject an absolutist sense of religious or political truth.

A great country cannot have weak people.

Behind every citizen lies a graveyard.

We're willing to move pretty far on this issue, we're much more tolerant than we used to be, but don't mix it up with religion and God.

Middle-class Americans have added an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not judge.

Appeasement cannot happen again because there is nothing like totalitarianism left to appease.

It is a hard and difficult thing to do to create a nation

A great country cannot have weak people.

Middle-class Americans have added an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not judge.

Behind every citizen lies a graveyard.

Liberalism is the answer for which modernity is the question

Most Americans reject an absolutist sense of religious or political truth.

The next time some neocon, demanding whatever military intervention neocons are demanding that day, invokes Hitler or Munich or appeasement, lock up your silver.

Liberal democracies have their own means of holding leaders accountable. They are called elections.

Appeasement cannot happen again because there is nothing like totalitarianism left to appease.

When confronted with political evil, we are better off responding to the ‘political’ rather than the ‘evil’.

Organized into a movement or state and motivated by a cause that gives them passion and purpose, practitioners of political evil are capable of carrying out violence on levels that far surpass those realizable by any lone individual.

Iraq failed for the same reasons that all conservative public policy efforts fail. Refusing to acknowledge the importance of government while relying on it to achieve your objectives causes the same kind of chaos in foreign policy that it does in matters closer to home.

In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture--and American culture has triumphed.

Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

We're willing to move pretty far on this issue, we're much more tolerant than we used to be, but don't mix it up with religion and God.

We ought to be more focused on enemies without than preoccupied with finding them within.

To teach kids that creationism explains something about the world is no different than teaching them that the earth is flat.

If once in America the question of religious toleration was raised in defense of nonbelievers who dissented from religious orthodoxy, today it is raised by believers who feel excluded from a predominantly secular public world.