American diversity: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

"People say Americans are by nature isolationists, an odd thing to say of a people who came from everywhere on earth and stay in touch with everywhere. Maybe the truth is that America is so vast, so varied, contains so many different cultures and histories, which in turn give rise to different assumptions and even ways of being, that it has been the work of more than two centuries for America just to know itself. Europe is all bunched together, of course they know each other. We are spread out on a vast continent. it takes a while to take it all in. We're not uninterested in other countries, we just have so many nations right here."

--Wall Street Journal coumnist Peggy Noonan