The great thing about America is not that we are a perfect country, but that we are always a redeemable one.

We have a certain mercurial charm (not to mention idiosyncratic way of doing things) that somehow manages to bring us back from the brink.

The world will never truly hate us, because we can and do change. And somehow, America has a knack for putting its best foot forward at just the right crucial moment.

Roger Cohen, also, is a shining example of editorial journalism in an age of glib semi-literate rants. He takes in the whole world, and manages to make sense of it, noticing all the right details.

Or is it something akin to the reasons I always left the door unlocked when my kids ventured out of our accommodation to their own and back and out and back........