Above all else, love and forgive. Understand that people who disagree with you are not necessarily idiots or your enemies. Respect the wisdom of the founding fathers and individual rights and freedoms. Always see the beauty and humor in life.

...I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.