Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex.

I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them.

Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.

Occasionally the conflict between 'what we stand for' and 'what we do' has been forthrightly addressed.

An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.