If every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round.

Those of us in the United States and in other countries around the world, free countries, hope that the choices they make are choices toward a more open society, a more transparent society.

Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity -- an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.

Now is not the time to open the border to receive Canadian beef down to the United States.

For some people, the pledge is a statement that the United States is a chosen nation, that the United States is a nation under God, that it is God's chosen nation,

The United States has some people in Europe with whom we disagree on this matter and a large number of people in Europe, including governments in Europe, with whom we agree.