| Oct 18, 2017 | Rights / DemocracyThis summer, on the very day that white supremacists rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, I was down the road visiting Montpelier — the home of James Madison, our fourth president. On the house tour, we stopped in Madison’s upstairs library, where he spent...
| Nov 18, 2015 | UncategorizedI sometimes say the government turned me into a dissident — after I spent 14 years at the CIA and two more at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I only say it half-jokingly. While I’m proud of winning this year’s PEN Center’s First Amendment award, I never...
| Oct 29, 2014 | Peace / SecurityThe soldiers who fought the Revolutionary War were our first veterans, the only cohort of U.S. warriors who took up arms to create rather than defend a country. If they lost, it meant treason. Having won, the nation treated them with a special reverence, right?...
| Sep 11, 2013 | Peace / SecurityIt began innocently enough. I volunteered on a museum’s boat-building project — a replica of a longboat of the type used by Commodore Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. Before I knew what was happening, there I was in period military...
| Jul 3, 2013 | Economy / BusinessTen generations have come and gone since 1776. Yet the Founders still fascinate us. Books about Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington still regularly dot our best-seller lists. What so attracts us to these men of means who put their security and...
