East and West, most societies have come to believe that competition will produce more prosperity for more people than a planned economy. I share that belief.

With one terrible exception, the Civil War, law and the Constitution have kept America whole and free.

We Americans have a sense of ourselves as a moral people. We have led the way in the fight for human rights in the world. Mistreating prisoners makes the world see our moral claims as hypocrisy.

The Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, in open court before an international tribunal, had a profound long-term effect in bringing Germans back to democracy and humanity.

I have always known my mother as an agnostic, less certain than my father that the universe hadn't been created by some great intelligence. But she would get even more annoyed than my father did when she thought that people were invoking God to do their jobs for them - for example, when she saw a bus with a sticker saying 'Allah Protect Us.'

I was about to meet Beyonce, and I had a full-blown anxiety attack. Then she popped in looking gorgeous, and said, 'You're amazing! When I listen to you I feel like I'm listening to God.'

I like America, where believers eddy around each other like currents of air. Even our atheists are devout! To be an American is to be a believer. I don't have much faith in institutions, but I still believe in people.

Any fool knows that bravado is always a cover-up for insecurity. That's the truth. And on that note, I'll say goodnight. God love you.