We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas.

The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.

The democratic principle, enunciated in the words of the Declaration of Independence, declared that government was secondary, that the people who established it were primary. Thus, the future of democracy depended on the people, and their growing consciousness of what was the decent way to relate to their fellow human beings all over the world.

The struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience.

Here's a president who gets 47 or 48 percent of the vote and takes 100 percent of the power, as if he had a mandate. He snuck into the presidency with the aid of political cronies, his father's having appointed members of the Supreme Court, his brother governor of Florida. And then he takes total control. And this is a president who seems to react to everything with force. Now we've had two wars. We've killed a lot of people. For anybody who is interested in not being a warlike nation anymore, and becoming a nation respected in the world, it becomes important to defeat Bush.

If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.

When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.