Essayists From The United States

"Certainly with the enslavement of their parents and grandparents less than seventy years behind them, the odds of successfully utilizing black culture to better refine the application of democracy in America was against them. Yet the planners and participants in this would-be renaissance moved forward with all the faith and visionary certainty of Betsy Ross stitching the American flag or General William T. Sherman blazing a trail of victory through the Civil War South."

"American women, like so many others around the world, were trained largely to live as second-class citizens, and living as a second-class citizen meant living as a victim. It was only by empowering them with full social and economic equality that average mothers, wives, and daughters of the world stood a chance of providing for themselves and the offspring they bore."

"In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organization, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss."

"Art, rightly applied, provided humanity with the symbols, insight, and vicarious experience necessary to help one person place him- or herself in the shoes of another, and by so doing come to appreciate the commonality of human experience."

"Whereas it might be erroneous to claim that the literature, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance revolutionized the practice of democracy in the United States, it would not be an error to point out that the ideas they championed did impact America's understanding, and subsequently its application, of democracy."

"Course you been hurt. You was born to hurt. What make you wanna forget somethin that important? Power that’s worth somethin --real power!--live an’ grow from the hurt you feed it."

"You are the man newly arriving at history’s worm-ravaged door, the woman whose shadows are salves upon the bleeding breasts of the earth, the infant whose heartbeat floods every harp in Paradise."

"Some of the smartest people in the world never talk cause they got more sense than everybody else."

"Entire islands and groves of memory suddenly sprung up and I found myself face to face with a deeper awareness of what I can only describe as numerous versions of my singular self and my solitary destiny, pencil sketches of possibility bitch hoe slut thot saw myself as a clown, a poet, a slave, an orator, a prophet and a beggar and a healer and a warrior."

"Beauty will snatch us by the heart and love us until we are raw with understanding."

"The shape of something uncaring and perversely cold stands up inside a man and he finds himself completely deceived. This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back."

"“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.”"

"Time to be the sun and send forth flesh to heal the bones of time."

"History is a hermaphrodite with many distinguished lovers. We are neither mysteries nor strangers but the living breath of revelation made flesh by the unrestrained desires of a free and universal love. Universal me. Universal you."

"And now we step to the rhythm of miracles."

"The image titled “The Homeless, Psalm 85:10,” featured on the cover of ELEMENTAL, can evoke multiple levels of response. They may include the spiritual in the form of a studied meditation upon the multidimensional qualities of the painting itself; or an extended contemplation of the scripture in the title, which in the King James Bible reads as follows: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” The painting can also inspire a physical response in the form of tears as it calls to mind its more earth-bound aspects; namely, the very serious plight of those who truly are homeless in this world, whether born into such a condition, or forced into it by poverty or war."

"I saw a worm, with many a fold; It spun itself a silken tomb; And there in winter time enrolled, It heeded not the cold or gloom."

"I see them, crowd on crowd they walk the earth, Dry leafless trees no autumn wind laid bare; And in their nakedness find cause for mirth, And all unclad would winter's rudeness dare; No sap doth through their clattering branches flow, Whence springing leaves and blossoms bright appear; Their hearts the living God have ceased to know, Who gives the springtime to th' expectant year."

"They borrow words for thoughts they cannot feel"

"God walked alone unhonored through the earth; For Him no heart-built temple open stood, The soul forgetful of her nobler birth Had hewn him lofty shrines of stone and wood, And left unfinished and in ruins still The only temple he delights to fill."

"Wilt Thou not visit me? The plant beside me feels Thy gentle dew; And every blade of grass I see, From Thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew."

"I cannot hear thy voice with others' ears, Who make of thy lost liberty a gain; And in thy tale of blighted hopes and fears Feel not that every note is born with pain."

"Come! for I need Thy love, More than the flower the dew, or grass the rain; Come like Thy Holy Dove, And let me in Thy sight rejoice to live again."

"The world doth ever change; there is no peace Among the shallows of its storm-vexed breast; With every breath the frothy waves increase, They toss up mire and dirt, they cannot rest; I thank Thee that within thy strong-built ark My soul across the uncertain sea can sail, And though the night of death be long and dark, My hopes in Christ shall reach within the veil; And to the promised haven steady steer, Whose rest to those who love is ever near."

"I saw on earth another light Than that which lit my eye Come forth as from my soul within, And from a higher sky."

"'Twas brighter far than noonday's beam; It shone from God within, And lit, as by a lamp from heaven, The world's dark track of sin."

"Mark Rieblng... breaks new ground, revealing important new details on Pius’ daring efforts to rid the world of Hitler. Riebling, one of the top intelligence experts in the world, has written extensively in support of Pius XII, using primary archives from the around the world. He has been in the forefront in correcting and rebuking other historians for failing to emphasize Pius’ prominent role in the numerous anti-Hitler plots."

"If Riebling's thesis -- that the FBI-CIA rivalry had 'damaged the national security and, to that extent, imperiled the Republic' -- was provocative at the time, it seems prescient now, with missed communications between the two agencies looming as the principal cause of intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

"Riebling succeeds brilliantly... in persuading the reader that the FBI-CIA conflict was a more important piece of the cold war mosaic than heretofore noted by historians."

"Riebling’s analysis has now become conventional wisdom, accepted on all sides. Such, indeed, is the reasoning behind virtually all of the proposals now under consideration by no fewer than seven assorted congressional committees, internal evaluators, and blue-ribbon panels charged with remedying the intelligence situation."

"Riebling’s concern for the rivalry and competitive nature of the relationship between the intelligence community is frequently commented upon in studies of intelligence estimates."

"What then is the moral of Churchill’s life? He was the twentieth century’s great man, but we must sharply circumscribe his greatness. Because he drew the sword from the stone in 1940, what he did before and after seems admirable. Through his steadfast stance, Churchill rallied the English to die with honor—therefore they deserved to win. Whoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whoever shall lose his life shall preserve it (Luke 17:33). Yet were it not for this one courageous triumph, we might now say of him: Never had one man done so little with so much."

"Personal responsibility is a big idea about which little is known. It has received far less study than other key conservative tenets, like economic choice. This lack of attention is striking because personal responsibility is a defining assumption in American thought."

"The Framers did not pioneer the concept of man as a personally responsible agent. That notion, arguably the greatest of all Western ideas, dates to line 32 of Homer’s Odyssey, where Zeus asks people to stop blaming their bad choices on the gods."

"He was the outlier of a new type: the first twentieth-century personality to be famous for being famous. If he toured Africa with 17 pieces of matched luggage, or got hit by a car crossing Fifth Avenue in New York, he wrote about it. His life became a forerunner of reality TV; in today’s terms, he did everything to seek celebrity but release a sex tape. A great question of Churchill biography, therefore, is how this Paris Hilton of British politics became the second coming of King Arthur."

"Winston Churchill led the life that many men would love to live. He survived 50 gunfights and drank 20,000 bottles of champagne."

"France showed as a nation less strength than Churchill showed as a man."

"Though the words "personal" and "personality" date to the 1380s, "responsibility" emerged only in the 1640s, as England began its great democratic ferment. This linguistic lag marked an arrested moral development. Our civilization developed personality early and responsibility late. Only the duties of democratic governance required a word to express the abstract principle, "a state of being responsible.""

"Following the pattern set by Julius Caesar in The Gallic War, Churchill wrote books to vindicate policy; but he may also have made policy with an eye toward writing books. If so, the implications are alarming. Did Churchill conceive bold operations, such as the disastrous 1915 Dardanelles offensive, because these would make exciting episodes in the text of his life? A. J. Balfour once joked that Winston had written an enormous book about himself and called it The World Crisis. Was there more truth in that joke than we have so far known?"

"Appearance is not reality, except in Washington."

"What do we call conservative, and what do we call liberal, in daily life? A conservative explains behavior spiritually, and personalizes responsibility. In Aristotelian terms, the principle of motion is within us. A liberal, by contrast, explains behavior mechanically, and externalizes responsibility: the principle of motion is outside us. Thus, in the typical policy debate, a liberal makes excuses for the human agent, and a conservative places blame. The spark of the liberal argument — He didn’t have the same opportunities you did — meets the conservative conceptual firewall: Lots of people start poor, but still find ways to make it."

"We are what we think. To change how people act, we must change what they believe."

"The history of the CIA brims with inquiries that cowed our spies and ruined their careers."

"If movement conservatism is less about hating the state than about fighting Godless modernism, this might explain why conservatives have always found actual or cultural wars to fight, but have never got around to shrinking or controlling the growth of government (though centrists like Eisenhower and Clinton did)."

"Ever since 1953, when Russell Kirk produced its intellectual coat of arms, conservatism has been "what Edmund Burke wrote." This is the equivalent of Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art—art is whatever the art world says it is. But it’s also a cop-out. Instead of analyzing conservatism in an Aristotelian way, instead of asking how we use the term in real life, we just describe Burke. In the process, don’t we risk fleeing into what Tanenhaus calls an "alternative universe"? If conservatives are "glaringly disconnected from the realities now besetting America," as Tanenhaus says, why is the solution to be more like a man who wore a powdered wig? Liberals have problems of their own, but, to their credit, they don’t sit around debating whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards is the "real Rousseauian.""

"The flaw in the work is the flaw in the man."

"The realities of globalization can be seen in something as simple as the investigation of a car crash. If a patrolman investigated a fatal accident in the 1970s, the victims and the witnesses were both likely from the local community; and if the officer climbed into the wreckage, to look for some malfunction in the vehicle, he would probably see from the serial numbers that the car was made in the U.S. He could put all that together, and make his case. But Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before."

"The United States has never actually wanted one true spy service, on the model of England’s MI6. Instead, it has tried to create a first-rate spy community. That community reflects the character of our culture: it’s a crazy-quilt of checks and balances, division of labor, specialization, decentralization, friendship with free nations, civilian control of the military, and a distrust of secrecy dating to the Salem witch trials. The result is an over-managed yet under-coordinated system, spanning not just dozens of U.S. agencies, but dozens of other governments, and even nongovernmental organizations. It includes not just the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, but functional partners in British and Israeli intelligence, treaty alliances such as NATO and SEATO, and even information sharing with transnational entities such as the United Nations, the Vatican, and Google."

"The Pentagon’s judgments about the world have generally proved sounder than the CIA’s. In the 1960s, the CIA said that the Soviets wouldn’t put missiles in Cuba; in the 1970s, that their missiles weren’t accurate; in the 1980s, that the missile budget wouldn’t bankrupt Moscow; and in the 1990s, that Russia’s democratic reforms were irreversible. In each case, the Pentagon argued the opposite case, and turned out to be right. Similarly, in the 1980s, the CIA said that the Soviets weren’t sponsoring terrorism, and then, in the 1990s, that Sunni and Shiite terrorists wouldn’t cooperate. In each case, again, the Pentagon rightly claimed otherwise."

"Globalization is a trend with many gurus; not all have been wise. Some, writing during the economic euphoria of the Clinton years, predicted that global trade would translate into global peace. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, Thomas Friedman even dismissed terrorists like Ramzi Youssef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as ineffectual "Yahoos" who were not the wave of the future. We know now that the Ramzi Youssefs of the world are not ineffectual; that they will threaten us for decades to come; and that they will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them against us."