Pastoral Resources

It's no longer an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species.

In a single moment, we witnessed the worst of human behavior. And in the next, the very best of human behavior. And even more, we witnessed the tremendous spirit of Americans.

Right after the tragedy, President Bush asked Americans to get on with their lives and we did.

He is not someone who went off to play in Europe and only a few Americans follow. He has the potential to be on magazine covers and more newspaper coverage.

I have no doubts that it will be a major sport-in the United States. I'm probably not going to live to see that day because Americans are a little afraid of getting interested in something at which they're not very good.

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it.

Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks.

Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers.

The President has launched a very agressive campaign of self-defense, with the goal of getting Americans to buy into his vision of America on the world stage.

But, yeah, as far as Asian Americans go, I hope they know they can look at me and see that they can do music on their own, within a band or just on their own, and not feel like there's any barriers. I've never felt any particular barriers myself, being who I am.

The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.

We must never forget that many around the globe are denied the basic rights we enjoy as Americans. If we are to continue enjoying these privileges and freedoms we must accept our mission of expanding democracy around the globe.

I hope that the mistakes made and suffering imposed upon Japanese Americans nearly 60 years ago will not be repeated against Arab Americans whose loyalties are now being called into question.

President Bush's proposal to focus our resources on sending humans to Mars is intriguing, but it is not the most compelling reason that Americans ought to focus our interest on the Red Planet.

I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count.

Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.

The President and I agree that Social Security needs to be preserved so that we can ensure that all Americans receive the retirement benefits they've been promised. But we disagree as to how best to fix the system.

I believe that as a nation we must have a bipartisan discussion about how to best preserve and protect Social Security for our seniors and for future generations of Americans.

To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

Americans should be free to recognize our religious heritage; doing that is not the same as creating a government-sponsored religion.