My conservative instinct says there's really nothing new under the sun. Technology almost by definition is developed to solve problems (necessity, recall, is invention's mommy). But, as conservative philosophy teaches us, the "problems" of the human condition are permanent. So while technology is ever changing, the human desires we try to satisfy with technology remain constant. For example, every innovation in mass media has been a boon to the porn industry. You can be sure that when we finally create holographic technology, it'll be put to good triple-X use long before we have a chance to see Hamlet in digital 3-D.

The scribes were treated with excessive deference in Jewish society because of their education and learning. Everyone honored them because of their wisdom and intelligence. The "mere children"(napioi in Greek, really meaning babes) were Jesus' image for the uneducated and ignorant. He is saying that the gospel of grace has been disclose to and grasped by the uneducated and ignorant instead of the learned and wise. For this Jesus thanks God... The babes (napioi) are in the same state as the children (paidia). God's grace falls on them because they are negligible creatures, not because of their good qualities. They may be aware of their worthlessness, but this is not the reason revelations are given to them. Jesus expressly attributes their good fortune to the Father's good pleasure, the divine eudokia. The gifts are not determined by the slightest personal quality or virtue. They were pure liberality. Once and for all, Jesus deals the death blow to any distinction between the elite and the ordinary in the Christian community.

Another woman on the block, a ranking government official, told me, "You know, the one thing we really have to thank ... [here she tugged at an imaginary beard; those less kindly disposed toward El Jefe of the Long Wind massage imaginary horns but similarly do not speak his name] ... for is that he relieved us of the Catholic curse, and so we have fewer sexual hang-ups than anyone in the Latin world. We use birth control like happy whores and we can divorce with the drop of a jockstrap." Some 82 percent of married Cuban women 15 to 49 regularly use birth control, compared with 70 percent in the U.S. Abortions are free of stigma and charge, and they are readily available and volubly defended by government officials. Divorce, my neighbor tells me, is so common in Cuba that the joke is that the child who actually lives at home with both biological parents will surely require psychotherapy.

To be a citizen is, literally, to be "of the city" - the very fractiousness that makes a city means that a "civic sense" is going to be a not a monument, but a river which is constantly carving out new channels, overflowing its banks, absorbing new tributaries and branching out into deltas. It is a spirit that pervades urban life at its best, which creates a sense of openness and possibity, and importantly a sense of the possibility of creating a community of choice - the hall mark of the city is that one may find, whatever ones interests and ideas, at least some small number of people who share them to an intensity that you may gather together as a group to advance them. The great urban flowerings of the past - for example Pharonic Thebes, Classical Athens, Hellenistic Alexandria, Moghul Dehli, Augustinian Rome, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, Romantic Paris, Fin de la Siecle Vienna, Weimar Berlin, Modern New York - shows what it is capable of producing in its hey dey. The imperfection of civic life is, to me, part of the dynamic energy which makes it exciting. Utopian ideals are for idyllic rural colonies in the hills, where serenity reigns and there is a quiet exclusivity. Urbanity is the profane orgy of human excitement wrapped in the fine control of a sacred sense of polity.

When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world.

The myth of a covenant, we are told, is simply no longer believable. From Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century through John Rawls in the twentieth, it was replaced by the myth of the social contract. I expect people counted the myth of the social contract more believable because it was a myth of their own creation. It was a fiction pure and simple, but it had the attraction of being our fiction. According to this story, human beings emerged from a "state of nature" in order to constitute society. Or, in the case of John Rawls, they are behind a pre-social "veil of ignorance" making deals with one another according to their calculated self-interest and thus bringing "society," with its key idea of justice, into being. No matter how sophisticated, or at least complicated, theories of social contract may be, they are as thoroughly made up as nursery tales. In fact, there are not and never have been human beings apart from societies. The individual person does not emerge from isolation into society but from society. Some societies are called primitive and some are called advanced, but society is the constant in the human story. The "state of nature" and "veil of ignorance" are fables; nobody has ever encountered, nor can we even plausibly hypothesize, persons apart from society.

Americans have at times "theologized" their history, seeing this experiment as an instrument — maybe even the instrument — of God's unfolding purposes. That way of thinking has been out of fashion for some time now. When it was in vogue, it was sometimes attended by a doctrine of American "exceptionalism" so exaggerated that American purposes were depicted in angelic hues, untouched by the ambiguities, corruptions, and lust for power associated with mere mortals... The caution is always in order. Those who think of themselves as angels may end up by giving themselves license to do things that are, in fact, quite beastly.

One reason American history is no longer told in terms of redemptive purpose is that we no longer think of history itself as having a purpose. History is a matter of this happening and then that happening and then the other thing happening, and who is to say what it all means? As the man said, "History is just one damn thing after another." The very idea that history should have a meaning strikes many of our contemporaries as highly improbable, maybe even nonsensical. If there is no purpose, there is no meaning. There is, although perhaps only on the surface, something attractively modest about this way of thinking. Especially when it is contrasted with the pride, presumption, and delusions of divinely ordained power that sometimes attended talk about "Christian America."

You would not believe the number of sensitivities that have to be kept in mind in public discourse. I once got mad at some Texas legislators over a spectacularly pea-brained stunt and referred to them as "a bunch of droolers." I was promptly served with pamphlets from an outfit called the Society to Prevent Cruelty to Those Who Involuntarily Drool. (Very sad, actually, people who have had strokes often drool involuntarily.) People make fun of political correctness, but if you're running for office, left-handed lesbians of Czech descent are out there, and they are touchy.

Because I believe in original sin, because I know that I'm capable of craving a cold beer in a village of starving kids, because I know that selfishness vies for space in our hearts with compassion, I believe we need government. A government that forces us to care about the common good even when we don't feel like it, a government that helps channel our better instincts and check our bad ones. I don't think government is good, just necessary.