But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

Beauty is an expression of that rapture of being alive.

If the watchdog doesn't bark, how do you know there's a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.

Lyndon Johnson believed the poor deserved a better life than the economy was providing them. He thought private power and greed had to be checked by a vibrant democracy.

We now know that a neo-conservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out.

I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.

In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life - one's own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough.