CoachJim

“For many Americans, especially non-Christians, the thought that Christian morality can be a useful guide to much of anything is risible, particularly since so many white evangelicals from 2016 forward chose to throw in their lot with a solipsistic American president who bullies, boasts, and sneers. Yet Lewis’s life suggests that religiously inspired activism may hold one of the best hopes for those who aim to make the life of the nation more just.
(Page 10)”
― Jon Meacham, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

“By the time a settlement was reached, at the beginning of 1973, under terms no better than Washington could have had in 1963 or 1964 to 1965, fifty-eight thousand Americans, and between 1.5 and three million Vietnamese, lay dead.”
(Page 335)”
― Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam

“The liberal hegemony was so firmly ensconced after the 1950s that when the ‘Reagan Revolution’ arrived in 1980, it did not revolutionize things as many anti liberal conservatives hoped and many liberals feared. Reagan’s victory did return anti liberal conservatives to positions of power for the first time since the 1920s, and, perhaps more important, gave them the feeling that they were finally being listened to, which encouraged them to organize and expand their efforts to push back against the liberal onslaught. Many of the institutions that would later play a role in the takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 were hatched and nurtured during the Reagan years.”
(Pages 149-150)”
― Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

“Most unforgivable was that a nation founded on Madisonian principles allowed secret police powers to accrue over forty years, until real and imagined heresies alike could be punished by methods less open to correction than the Salem witch trials.”
(Page 919)”
― Taylor Branch