John Rawls was remembered by his publishers with the following quotation: “The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world.” In that spirit, CQ's annual nonthematic Open Forum issue offers a collection of provocative papers on a variety of topics chosen to stir rational debate and challenge the prejudices and intellectual mistakes that can so easily cloud ethical vision.