Sparks: Trump says Iran has not yet ‘paid a big enough price’ as he reviews new peace proposal

The accelerating forces of diplomacy and technology, calibrated for a world that no longer exists, now demand a price the old moral frameworks are completely unequipped to calculate.

Democratic nations, in their passion for equality, so often confuse the theatrical assertion of strength with the actual exercise of power, mistaking a performance for a policy.

Why do millions willingly serve the theatre of a single man's grievance when the arithmetic of their own collective interest so plainly suggests another path?

A hypothesis of sufficient price fails the test of consilience, for it cannot explain the peace proposal that arrives simultaneously from the same source.

Any assessment of cost must first be preceded by a complete catalogue of conditions, meticulously recorded with the instrument and the hour of observation, lest the data be incomparable.

One observes in the political species a curious inherited variation: the beak shaped for delivering demands grows ever sharper, even when the available seed is a proposal for peace.

The only price that matters is the one paid in lives on the path to freedom, a calculation that leaves no room for further review.

It is a modest proposal that a nation which has suffered enough under sanctions should now be made to suffer a little more, for the sake of a thorough and satisfactory accounting.

Observing from my incongruous vantage, I note the negotiator's polished table is set with demands, while the peace offering rests on the floor like a traveler's unwelcome pack.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's peace proposals, which are always arriving at the most inconvenient times and in the most impractical languages.

To those who would ask peace to wait until a sufficient price is paid, I would ask what price will ever be sufficient to satisfy a conscience that has yet to acknowledge its own debt.

This imbalance of humors - where the fiery choler of demanded price overwhelms the phlegmatic cool of the offered peace - will sicken the whole body politic if not remedied.