The doo-wop stalker love song on a Cincinnati oldies station — you broke up with me because I was an obnoxious jerk and now you're dating him, so I d… - Sarah Vowell

You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire.

As a Frenchman who represented neither North nor South, East nor West, left nor right, Yankees nor Red Sox, Lafayette has always belonged to all of us.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,” Washington wrote. “For, happily, the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.