The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.

Whether you're a libertarian liberal or a more egalitarian liberal, the idea is that justice means being non-judgmental with respect to the preferences people bring to public life.

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.

The biggest hurdle is figuring out who your friends are. Your real friends.

People pushing the idea that everyone can live to be 100 are perpetuating a myth that goes all the way back to the Bible.

I find this in all these places I've been travelling - from India to China, to Japan and Europe and to Brazil - there is a frustration with the terms of public discourse, with a kind of absence of discussion of questions of justice and ethics and of values.