The only people who have never had a problem with me speaking in their venues are independent bookstores and libraries. Universities and humanities councils have canceled me, but never an independent bookstore.

There's something so remarkable in the intensity of taking care of somebody who can't take care of him or herself. And then watching that little person bloom into adolescence.

Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.

We were very excited and we brought speakers in – then it so happened that there was a marine recruiter in the center of campus and one of our brothers, one SDS person put up a sign with a quote from the Nuremberg trial and an arrow point at the marine recruiter, saying, "This man is a war criminal." My younger brother and I, he was freshman and I was a sophomore, got caught up in the debates that were swirling around the center of campus and the young Trotskyists had put out a fact sheet on Vietnam that was phenomenal.

I dropped out in '64. And I came back to Michigan, in '65. In 1965, when I came back I had never heard of Vietnam.

There are things about classic liberalism that obviously I'm drawn to and I bet all of you are as well. Those are things like liberty, freedom, the Bill of Rights. But the reason that I reject the label is that I grew up cutting my teeth against the liberals.

Without a doubt. It's woven into our DNA in a very deep way and so to kind of be smacked in the face with the hypocrisy of the America that we were sold was a liberating and harsh experience.