We can see in retrospect that criminalizing the consumption of alcohol proves not to be the solution to the very real problem of drunkenness. So to what I want to say is the very real problem of the human susceptibility to addiction isn't best dealt with by building prisons and throwing people into jails.

My sermon for us Americans would be to construct the kind of institutions of mutuality and social cooperation that don't leave 15 or 20 percent of our people falling through the cracks. We can do it. It's not like we don't know what to do. It's not like there aren't models there. It's not like this isn't being done elsewhere. It's not like we can't afford to do it. It's a question of political will and it's about our definition as a people.

If you have a system that says everybody who needs healthcare gets it and we're going to make sure that it gets paid for by raising your taxes and providing the requirements on individuals where they have the ability to pay, such as we determine as appropriate, then the insurance issue doesn't come up.

The fact that we don't' talk about it, that we don't have a politics in which this question of war and peace can even get onto the table, so that we can open up our Orwell, our 1984, or Animal Farm, or whatever, and read the political text that's being spotted to us on the television right off of the page; the fact that we don't have a politics robust enough to actually debate whether or not we want to be a country permanently at war. That's what keeps me from sleeping at night.

Racial problems can't be easily reconciled with a pat account about racism and discrimination that lets us sort of relax into saying when we finally get this right, when we get rid of racism, when we reach the post-racial society, everything is going to be okay. Well, no, because along the way here, as we've not yet been in this racial nirvana, facts on the ground have been created.

The land of the free - we've got an army marching around the world under the banner of freedom, and yet, we are the most un-free society, in terms of institutions of the deprivation of liberty, of incarceration. The incidents of incarceration is higher in the United States than elsewhere in the world.

My mouth is no prayer book, but my view is, I'd view addiction to these substances as a medical problem and I would treat it accordingly. What little I know about the history of drug control policy in the United States leaves me thinking that a hugely important moment came when the lawyers win out over the doctors on this matter.