Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of wor… - Sarah Vowell

While history might be full of exemplary fathers, recorded history is not where to find them.

Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

For Americans, Acts 16:9 is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses — an all-purpose ingredient we'll stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing (yet not entirely unwarranted) sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion.