George Mitrovich is president of The City Club of San Diego and The Denver Forum, two leading American public forums.

While browsing recently in the fiction section of the Adams Avenue Book Store in Normal Heights I came across a book about Ayn Rand, although the book I pulled from the shelf was not fiction, but was leaning against “Atlas Shrugged.”

"If we know a nation is capable of enduring continuous discussion, we know that it is capable of practicing with equanimity continuous tolerance." — Walter Bagehot, "Physics and Politics" (1872)

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.