“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.
Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).
The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.
I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.
I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.
If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:
… “A New (Cold) Civil War or Secession?” “The Culture War,” “Polarization and De-facto Partition,” and “Civil War?“
What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.
I solved these problems easily by reverting to the British style:
… “A New (Cold) Civil War or Secession?”, “The Culture War“, “Polarization and De-facto Partition“, and “Civil War?“.
This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.
For much more see “Writing: A Guide“.
Politics and Prosperity 
of the 5 sports you cite, two of them require equipment not used by the others ie hockey sticks, baseball gloves and bats.
as for catching the ball you forgot about the goalkeeper in soccer and the skill known as trapping the ball.
throwing – well you forgot about the goalkeeper throwing the ball
over all this was a poor attempt to show that baseball is king
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Mere quibbles. 🙂
Good to hear from you again.
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Further comments:
Baseball and hockey employ more specialized equipment because they’re more advanced games than basketball, football, and soccer. Baseball and hockey therefore require more advanced skills. More people can play soccer than can play baseball or hockey. but that’s not a mark of skill, which is the basis on which I’m evaluating the sports. To the contrary, the greater accessibility of soccer is prima facie evidence that it requires less skill than baseball or hockey. Basketball and football (at the pro level) are dominated by freaks of nature. But, inherently, basketball and football — like soccer — are less demanding of motor skills and hand-eye coordination than are baseball and hockey.
Catching and trapping the ball are included in the score for goaltending in soccer. I’ve given soccer goaltenders way too much credit, relative to hockey goaltenders, who work under worse conditions (more screened shots, tremendously fast and injurious puck, faster action around the net, greater frequency of rebound shots).
The goalie occasionally throws a soccer ball, but throwing isn’t an integral part of the game as it is in baseball, where almost every play involves a throw, or in basketball, where throwing (shooting) is essential to scoring.
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