I spent the last week in Paris, which for me makes for days of restaurants, movies, bookstores, and museums. When I was living in Cambridge and its environs in the 1970s this area was a lot like it, but it isn't anymore. The break allowed me to think more clearly about the state of our own nation, and to perhaps get a better look at the great, ever-changing forest of American history, zooming backwards from that one orange-colored tree that so dominates our lives. Yes, our country is in a terrible mess, and yes, we have a president who is...