I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.

If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.

American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.