Mr. Hannity: "Liberals," including US Catholic bishops, reproachfully stirred up millions of people to join nuclear freeze demonstrations in the early 1980s. (p. 76)

My response: Some brief background on this issue might help clarify the discussion. Early in the Cold War, American administrations pursued a strategic, offensive-defense security doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea was for the US to maintain "strategic parity" with the Soviet Union --that is, a balance among number, power, sophistication and readiness of atomic bombs such that neither country would dare to start a nuclear war against the other thanks to fear of equally destructive retaliation by the adversary. Except for a temporary challenge during President John F. Kennedy's administration, which began courageously downsizing America's nuclear arsenal, the MAD doctrine more or less continued to guide American nuclear policy through containment to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of the 1970s, which aimed to mutually reduce US and Soviet nuclear forces. The acronym of MAD was quite appropriate; this delicate policy was truly insane, as it could not be continued for long without leading eventually to a global nuclear disaster.

Dalton McGuinty achieved an impressive triumph for the Liberal Party in last week's Ontario Province elections, winning the premiership by an impressive 10-point margin over his nearest competitor.

McGuinty won the premier's post with a 42 percent vote, a substantial plurality figure.  The 52-year-old lawyer held a solid edge over John Tory of the Liberal Progressives.  Tory achieved a 32 percent figure.

It is good news for progressives that McGuinty triumphed by opposing the issue that Tory hoped would propel his party to victory.  That issue was what is termed separation of church and state in the United States.  

Tory sought public funding of faith-based private schools.  His party's loss is seen as a reflection that Ontario's voters rejected the idea of financing through the public treasury parochial schools.

Friday evening I had the great pleasure of venturing to the Fifth Street Theatre in downtown Seattle to view a performance of "Camelot" starring Michael York in the role of the renowned King Arthur.

I was curious to see the new material in the musical drama, an element of the current road show version of the blockbuster Broadway hit that has endured as a standard.  

"Camelot" has been applied to the Administration of John F. Kennedy.  It was appropriate that the Harvard University chum of college student Kennedy was none other than Alan Jay Lerner, the great lyricist who teamed up with Frederick Lowe to achieve a second smash hit in succession following their earlier triumph with "My Fair Lady."

It was further appropriate that the changes in the original show's book, written by Moss Hart, were made by none other than Lerner's son Michael, as was reported in "Playbill" and elsewhere with a sense of keen anticipation.

There was a time when a young college freshman who had paid a disproportionate amount of time to following the exploits of baseball and football teams and was now seeking to play catch up and learn something about American history and politics received a Christmas gift that he found practical and intellectually stimulating.

This college freshman's father idolized President Franklin Delano Roosevelt among all other political leaders and gifted the young man just beginning his trek into the realm of knowledge with a copy of The Politics of Upheaval, the latest in the series of works on the only president in American history to be elected four times, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

To provide an illustration of the importance of this work as a developmental tool on this young student's mind, it is necessary to move forward to when this same person's first historical work was published.

I know this individual well since it happens to be me.  I learned how absorbing I found Schlesinger's book, as well as the influence it had on me, when I was living in Cape Cod and was being interviewed about my first historical work, Struggle for the Holy Land, by a local radio personality, Rob Morris.

The greatness of a speech is not in the ears of those who are present to hear it.  There were many gathered in Gettysburg who were disappointed at the president's brief remarks.  There were even more gathered in Nuremberg who rose to ecstasy on wings of hate provided by a madman.  A great speech isn't measured in the applause it brings, or in the approving comments in the next day's papers.

It's in the echoes.  It's in the way the words move down the corridor of years, painting events that come after, living in the minds of those who were not even alive when the words were uttered.

For those of us who lived through "I have a dream" or "ask not," those few words are enough to bring back a scene, a time, and heart-wrenching emotions.  For a generation before, "but fear itself" must have brought much the same reaction.  Before that, there was a "cross of gold," and before that "the better angels of our nature."

And before that, was a speech delivered by a young man of 28, a man just entering public life.  You may never have heard this speech, but it's words not only echo in our modern world, they resonate.