Social distinctions tend to matter only at your own level and above.

When you treat reprehensible and ludicrous arguments with respect you have elevated the reprehensible and made the ludicrous a bit more reasonable. Having a serious argument with a Nazi makes the horror of the Holocaust a debatable point. Don't wrestle in the mud with pigs. You get dirty and the pig likes it.

[There] is something fundamentally unpatriotic in the yearning to fundamentally transform your country.

But this is the kind of ass-clownery that stems from the fact that all philosophy looks weird when you don't have one.

One of the things that really drove me crazy was the way in which college kids, in particular, are educated to think that ideology is dangerous and bad.

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.

In crude Marxist terms, liberals have a theory of infallible government that is constantly at war with the reality of life.