I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

Americans are free to choose everything from what they eat drive and watch on TV to the President of the United States. Yet when it comes to allowing Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family the freedom to choose suddenly becomes un-American.

If this liberal potential is properly channeled we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.

We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States as other countries do. Under the First Amendment freedom of the press freedom of speech and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.

When the United States was founded the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships monarchies and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world.

The United States and Israel have a unique relationship based on our mutual commitment to democracy freedom and peace. Therefore just as our commitment to these principles must be steadfast so must our support for Israel.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment but of boredom.

Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza with no individual liberty and no freedom of speech or press.

We in the United States should be all the more thankful for the freedom and religious tolerance we enjoy. And we should always remember the lessons learned from the Holocaust in hopes we stay vigilant against such inhumanity now and in the future.

The State is the altar of political freedom and like the religious altar it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.