My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.
Max Boot
You can debate when the conservative movement became a racket - I nominate 1996, the year Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes created Fox News Channel to monetize right-wing outrage - but there is no doubt it has long since passed that point.
I am by no means suggesting that everyone who uses the neocon label is doing so as an anti-Semitic smear, but the word has been used often enough in that ugly context that it should make any person of goodwill think twice before employing it.
I don't know if I can ever change the world, but at least I can change the oil in my car.
As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women.
Silence is complicity. All Republicans who stand mute in the face of Trump's latest racism are telling you who they really are.
Neoconservatism' once had a real meaning - back in the 1970s. But the label has now become meaningless. With many of those who are described as neocons, including me, fleeing the Trumpified right, the term's sell-by date has passed.
Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.
The case for democracy is that voters in the aggregate will make better decisions than a lone monarch or dictator would.
On both sides of the Atlantic, politics has come to be dominated by vitriolic name-calling and pervasive dishonesty.
I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism.
It is, in fact, precisely to defend the right to free speech that countless patriots have given the last full measure of devotion.
Protests, such as those in favor of labor rights, women's suffrage, civil rights and gay rights, helped to make America as great as it is.
The United States has been locked in an escalating confrontation with Iran ever since President Trump decided to pull out of the nuclear deal in 2018 and to impose unilateral sanctions in 2019.
All acts of terrorism - all killings of the innocent - are an abomination, and one that is made all the worse when the victims are chosen for their skin color, ethnicity, sexuality or religious beliefs.
Air superiority, which the United States has taken for granted since World War II, is no longer assured. And, without control of the skies, U.S. ships and soldiers would be vulnerable in ways that are difficult to imagine.
Even being too good at teaching is risky at research universities; the joke is that a 'teacher of the year' award is the kiss of death for non-tenured professors.
The genteel conservatism of 'Downton Abbey' is not a rigid, extremist ideology whose adherents are bent on power at all costs.
I remain troubled by the deliberate killing of civilians, whether by the United States or by its enemies.
Joining the Grand Old Party seemed like a natural choice for someone like me who fled the Soviet Union as a boy and came to Los Angeles with his mother and grandmother in 1976.
The ur-conservatives of the 1950s - William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and all the rest - were revolting not against a liberal administration but against the moderate conservatism of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
As someone who has spent much of my life identifying as a conservative, I can't stand what American conservatism has become.
I am white. I am Jewish. I am an immigrant. I am a Russian American. But until recently I haven't focused so much on those parts of my identity. I've always thought of myself simply as a normal, unhyphenated American.
I still have admiration for the vast majority of police officers, but there is no denying that some are guilty of mistreating the people they are supposed to serve.
But while I am proud to be an American, I am ashamed of what the Trump administration is doing in our name. It is literally rewriting the meaning of America.
Once upon a time - in the days of Margaret Thatcher and John Major - I would have rejoiced in a Conservative Party landslide in Britain. But now, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's victory fills me with fear and foreboding.
Unfortunately, history suggests that dictatorial regimes can withstand years, even decades, of economic sanctions.
Democrats deserve credit for engaging with big issues such as climate change and income inequality and coming up with bold, imaginative solutions.
Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender - and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.
The scandal isn't that refugees want to come to the United States. It's that Trump is abusing these aspiring Americans and closing our doors to them.
Thirty years on, I am no longer as certain about anything as I was at age 20. I now regret my support for the war in Iraq and kick myself for the naive expectation that freedom was destined to prevail.
Logic, fact, morality, legality, ideology: All of it is irrelevant in understanding the Party of Trump. Republicans have made crystal clear that nothing matters to them other than partisanship.
Joe Biden stands out from other Democratic candidates not just by taking on President Trump directly but also by seeking to separate Trump from the rest of the Republican Party.
Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat who is more hawkish than President Obama and far more principled and knowledgeable about foreign affairs than Trump, who is too unstable and erratic to be entrusted with the nuclear triad he has never heard of.
There are two kinds of people: Those who like active vacations and those who like sedentary vacations. I'm one of the weird hybrids who likes both. That makes me, I suppose, the Jekyll and Hyde of holidayers.
Catering to populist anger with extremist proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success.
Mom developed an interest in 'heritage-language education after noticing an increasing number of students in her UCLA classes whose parents were Russian.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, as many as 60,000 people were executed in Europe as suspected witches. But it would be nice to think that centuries of advances in science and education have made people less prey to phantasms and falsehoods.
Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes.
I used to be one of those people who read thrillers on vacation, but for some reason most thrillers no longer thrill me. Maybe because these days reality is far more unbelievable than any fiction?
I find contentment in the craft of writing and fulfillment in self-expression.
Anyone anywhere - as long as you live in a country that does not censor the Internet - can now read this newspaper. But like diners passing up a healthy salad for an artery-clogging cheeseburger, many information consumers are instead digesting junk news.
France has had socialist presidents on and off since the 1920s, and it remains a free country. Socialists have ruled in many South American countries without ushering in disaster.
Irrationality may be more prevalent in the party of climate denial, but it isn't limited to Republicans.
What's true for New York is true for most of the country: We are a long way removed from the double-digit interest rates and unemployment rates, and the soaring crime rates, of the early 1980s.
Mexico attacked United States troops in 1846 because they had moved into disputed border territory; President James Polk used this as a convenient casus belli, but he was preparing a war message for Congress even before the attack.
The John F. Kennedy presidency, with its glittering court of Camelot, cemented the impression that it was the Democrats who represented the thinking men and women of America.
There is a small group of 'Never Trump' conservatives. But it is a small group, and I've actually been surprised that there are not more of us. There's enough of us for a dinner party, not a political party. I wish there were more.
Well, a general danger of punditry is that there's very little incentive to change your position or admit error. If you reverse your position, the people who backed you before will be unhappy, but a lot of the people who now agree with you will still pillory you.
To win in 2020, a Democratic nominee will need to win back voters in key Midwestern states who supported Trump in 2016.
