"My time in the Middle East led me to realize that, with a few rare exceptions, the dominant political ideology there--whether you were talking about Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds, Israelis, Arabs, Persians, Turks, or Palestinians--was "I am weak, how can I compromise? I am strong, why should I compromise?" The notion of there being "a common good" and "a middle ground" that we all compromise for and upon--not to mention a higher community calling we work to sustain--was simply not in the lexicon."