A Promised Land

Human beings are members of a whole In creation of one essence and soul.

to run along its predetermined course, an endless cycle of fear, hunger and conflict, dominance and weakness?

Du Bois writes, Black Americans remain the perpetual “Other,” always on the outside looking in, ever feeling their “two-ness,” defined not by what they are but by what they can never be.

surface?” “If they

Was it possible that abstract principles and high-minded ideals were and always would be nothing more than a pretense, a palliative, a way to beat back despair, but no match for the more primal urges that really moved us, so that no matter what we said or did, history was sure

To be known. To be heard. To have one’s unique identity recognized and seen as worthy. It was a universal human desire, I thought, as true for nations and peoples as it was for individuals.

I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and ne

My administration’s hope was to initiate what we were calling a “reset” with Russia, opening a dialogue in order to protect our interests, support our democratic partners in the region, and enlist cooperation on our goals for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. To this end, we’d arranged for me to meet privately with Medvedev a day ahead of t

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said about politics during the Soviet era, that “the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”