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" The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time. "
Jon Meacham
Limits
Rights
Time
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" Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender. "
Jon Meacham
Gender
Wrong
Children
" The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism. "
Jon Meacham
Intellectual
Support
Fight
" In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes. "
Jon Meacham
Racial
Will
Today
" Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books. "
Jon Meacham
People
War
Writing
" The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism, economic inequality, is real and growing. "
Jon Meacham
Children
Future
Work Hard
" It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country. "
Jon Meacham
Politics
Work
White
" I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt's, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans - but he was also a cold-blooded politician. "
Jon Meacham
Good
I Am
Done
" I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day. "
Jon Meacham
Questions
Day
Answer
" The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality. "
Jon Meacham
More
History
Great
" The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life. "
Jon Meacham
Help
America
Fall
" It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972, the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama, who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters. "
Jon Meacham
Race
Thought
Rise
" World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man. "
Jon Meacham
Depression
Man
History
" One wonders whether the Obama re-election campaign may be on the right track as it seeks to apply the you-break-it-you-own-it rule to Bush and the American economy. Hardly a day goes by without President Obama or his surrogates arguing that it takes longer than four years to recover from an economic crisis so long in the making. "
Jon Meacham
Crisis
Day
American
" As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs. "
Jon Meacham
People
Police
Fire
" Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority, then we would be more open to slavery, to the subjugation of women, to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms. "
Jon Meacham
Women
Open
Slavery
" President Obama is now losing to 'Republican Nominee' in polls - no name needed. "
Jon Meacham
Name
Losing
Republican
" A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far. "
Jon Meacham
Future
World
Walls
" Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation. "
Jon Meacham
Wonder
News
Gun
" Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations; Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor. "
Jon Meacham
Politics
Hate
Generation
" Whoever rises to deliver the inaugural Address of 2013 will speak to a nation in which the American Dream is under profound economic and cultural pressure. This is perhaps best measured by the state of the middle class. "
Jon Meacham
American
Speak
Best
" The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one's virtues in a vigorous way. "
Jon Meacham
Political
Honorable
Path
" In America, now, let us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever - fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love one's enemies. A tall order, that - perhaps the tallest of all. "
Jon Meacham
Strength
America
Fight
" Environmental concern is a little like dieting or paying off credit-card debt - an episodically terrific idea that burns brightly and then seems to fade when we realize there's a reason we need to diet or pay down our debt. The reason is that it's really, really hard, and too many of us in too many spheres of life choose the easy over the hard. "
Jon Meacham
Life
Choose
Easy
" Incumbent White House parties have won 10 of the last 18 presidential elections; the odds are tight, but they favor Obama in 2012. And so gloomy Democrats, check your despair; gleeful Republicans, watch the hubris. "
Jon Meacham
House
White
Watch
" Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot. "
Jon Meacham
Same
Say
More
" Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological. "
Jon Meacham
Bible
Simple
Hands
" History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other? "
Jon Meacham
Best
Government
History
" Anyone weighing whether to re-elect the President should take the bin Laden operation into account: it is a powerful exhibit that Obama is a steely Commander in Chief - a critical test for many Americans. "
Jon Meacham
President
Take
Test
" Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith. "
Jon Meacham
Doubt
History
Belief
" I believe that my children, who are young, will look back on the early years of the 21st century in rather the same way I look back on the middle of the 20th: as a time when seemingly respectable people supported discrimination against Americans simply because those Americans were different from themselves. "
Jon Meacham
Children
Believe
Time