This year's episode of Civility Strikes Back relates to the baggy-pants half-moon.

If we're going to talk about "nation building," it would be extremely helpful to define the word "nation."

A great deal of the disunity between Bin Laden and America is based on differing perceptions of how men and women ought to get along. It's difficult to reconcile his view of women with American customs.

Why are we allowing an Islamic public school, teaching intifada, in New York City? Don't we already have enough terrorists?

Mr. Cho's victims' families shouldn't be suing Virginia Tech; all it would accomplish is to enrich greedly lawyers while doing nothing useful.

The only common purpose powerful enough to build a nation is greed.

Bureaucracies never die, and India's still uses genuine red tape.

Few people argue that it's OK for a woman, even an abused woman, to shoot a man in cold blood when she's not in danger at the time. There are shelters for battered women, and the staff know not to tell who's there. So why can't women just leave?

"It is the duty of every officer of His Majesty's Navy, to discharge powder and shot in the general direction of the enemy."

The trouble is, the system was designed to keep a record of who was where, when.