When the topic is growing income inequality, it's hard to prettify an imbalance between the rich and everybody else, so instead, conservatives try to argue that it doesn't exist.

There's a growing consensus that the best way to defeat communism in Cuba is to get its citizens hooked on American goods.

The pathological degree to which former Vice President Dick Cheney operated in secrecy led to government abuses that we'll probably spend years learning about.

The advantage of a market-based national defense is obvious: Every citizen would receive an individualized amount of military protection, based on the value each of us placed on defending the homeland.

Government, in many ways, is absolutely going to, if not already has, become irrelevant. It's not going to be in control anymore with the technologies that are coming down the pipe.

While the problems facing the country are huge, it is in times of great disruption that we can make the most important changes to our society and help to rebuild our fractured, broken politics.

It may take a generation to achieve democracy. But our generation must accomplish this and not pass the buck to the next.

Yet the march toward freedom is not without its hazards or its casualties and the threats of violence aimed at Iraqis who participate in the election will be dealt with accordingly.