Our nation is too different too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech and which by imposing the most terrible punishments treats each and every attempt at criticism however morally justified and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

You know this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith is a good notion but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.