Politicians are conservative by nature.

There were no political ideas. It was an apolitical time. It was the '50s and in the privilege of the suburbs.

I haven't been silent. I teach, I lecture at universities, I write, I'm not silent.

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.

One of the great crimes of the Bloomberg/Klein administration [in New York City] is that they've removed themselves from communities, as if communities have nothing to say about what their needs and aspirations are for themselves and for their children.

If you read the literature of Soviet Communism, you see a dogma that's chilling. On the other hand, if you read the literature of anti-communism, it's every bit as dogmatic.

It's amazing where the paranoid mind can take you.