The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.

The family is a haven in a heartless world.

Because politics rests on an irreducible measure of coercion, it can never become a perfect realm of perfect love and justice.

The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.

[Reinhold] Niebuhr endorsed G.K.Chesterton’s observation that tolerance is the attitude of those who do not believe in anything.

Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life. It 'educates' the masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfillment.