Words are everything, the precursor to fierce ideas and therefore of sound politics. In an era when a misjudged word can and will end a career beneath a social media pile-on, ideas will lack vigour and politics be reduced to the predictably poor. Meanwhile, the town square becomes a bloody battleground, the pursuit of truth a casualty found wrapped in the dead arms of butchered civility

The desecration of property has been an unfortunate by-product of […]

The figures of the past -- especially the tyrants, racists and bigots -- can be our greatest teachers. Consider, for example, Germany’s very public and thorough preservation of its shameful Holocaust history. Mobs bent on destruction don't appreciate this, but the cost of obliterating the past is far more than than that of damaged bronze

I look forward to the Minneapolis policeman who killed George Floyd receiving a punishment commensurate with his wrong. We cannot afford police brutality and we must never excuse the death of a man who should still be alive. But we must get over overstatement