The oligarchs think that the people are both dangerous and stupid. Their point is moot. But we do know that the oligarchs are a good deal more dangerous to the polity than the people at large.

Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.

Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

The ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman.

First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'