While there are towns and cities still planning Memorial Day parades many have not held a parade in decades. Some think the day is for honoring anyone who has died not just those fallen in service to our country.

I interviewed survivors I went to Poland saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.

We should invade their countries kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.

Traveling you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities places exchange their form order distances a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

It's true that humanity has seen a succession of crises wars and atrocities but this negative side is offset by advances in technology and cultural exchanges.

I think that when we have a better educated society when there is less violence in our cities when people get back into the workforce and have the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families - that for me really is the kind of success and the kind of America that I think most of us still want we aspire to.

In modern society where most people live in cities and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished.

American society as a whole can never achieve the outer-reaches of potential so long as it tolerates the inner cities of despair.