To make a living space, there first had to be a killing space.

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

My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all the Arab countries combined.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.