Are you more likely to tolerate drivel than you were four years ago? I think the answer is yes. Four years of Reagan has deadenedthe senses against a barrage of uninterrupted nonsense.

Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.

So much for the crusade against drugs . . . all America is actually doing is consolidating its position as the biggest dealer in addictive and lethal substances on the planet, waging war on all rivals, whether they take the form of the Thai domestic tobacco industry or the Colombian cocaine cartels.

There's a whole journalistic-industrial complex dedicated to keeping newsprint, TV screens and radio waves clean of destabilizing scoops damaging to corporations or the state.

Be careful about Burma. Most people cannot remember whether it was Siam and has become Thailand, or whether it is now part of Malaysia and should be called Sri Lanka.

The art of politics is to separate actions from consequences

A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.