Why do we have to be a military superpower? Why can't we be a humanitarian superpower?

Right is not only to act within the law. It's to also act according to the conscience.

Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.

The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.

There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.